The Girl in the Blue Beret

16.



MARSHALL SPENT THE AFTERNOON REMINISCING WITH PIERRE and Gisèle. Some retirees might play golf or sit on the porch, but he would drink wine in a French home with people he knew in his youth.

He ventured, “I know that you were out at night on important missions when I was hiding here.”

Pierre grinned. “It’s good the Germans were not as observant as you.”

“I will show you his medals,” said Gisèle, jumping up and rushing from the room.

The medals were framed under glass—the Medal of Freedom, the Légion d’Honneur, the Medaille de la Résistance, and the Croix de Guerre.

Marshall examined them while Pierre fetched another bottle of wine. After he had poured the wine, he began, in a disjointed way, to gather his memories.

“I don’t get to speak of it often,” he said. “You perhaps know that I was the chief of our group here, and I kept the arms for all the secteurs of the region.”

“In your house here?”

“Oh, no, no. Gisèle would never permit that. No, a neutral place. We planned the sabotages, and everyone involved had to have invincibility—how do you say in English, innocence?”

“Deniability?” Marshall said, thinking of Watergate.

“Oh, the sabotages we planned against the boches! Every day we did the telephone lines. On several occasions we blew up the railroad tracks—and the canal locks.”

“And the alcohol distillerie,” Gisèle said.

“Yes. And the bridges on the highways, as well as those across the river. After you left here, we accelerated our clandestine activities, anticipating the débarquement of the Allies.” Pierre sipped his wine and was silent for some moments. “But after the Allies arrived on June 6, things grew worse—open combat with the boches. When the Allies came to Normandy, you understand, the boches were in panic for their marvelous Reich. I delivered all the arms to the secteurs and asked my men to leave their jobs and be prepared for widespread action against the enemy. More than ever, our efforts were necessary. This became very bad, for the Gestapo was on alert against all Résistance activity. This was especially hard for me, for many men came to the house and I had to be ready.”

“We received a warning,” Gisèle said.

Pierre had to go underground, to a friend’s house, seven kilometers away, for fifteen days, while Gisèle and Nicolas stayed at home. Gisèle was certain Pierre would be arrested.

“And you comprehend what this would mean,” Pierre said. Grinning, he drew his finger across his throat.

“But I was careful. I was thinking up here.” Pierre touched his forehead. “I was a step ahead of the boches. They were strangers here, but I knew the place. I knew what they might do next, where they might go.”

“He said that again and again, until I maybe believed it,” Gisèle said.

“You and Nicolas were my eyes and ears, too. You did your part.”

“I remember Nicolas and his reports,” Marshall put in. “Always busy.”

Gisèle, twisting her hands together nervously, said, “You will never know this ordeal, Marshall.”

“It turned out well, chérie!” Pierre said.

“I was happy to shelter the aviateurs. The rest was horrible.”

Pierre acknowledged the dangers, but then he laughed.

After his period underground, he was given another assignment—to investigate in his region of Aisne all the munitions and fuel depots for airplanes, the German army headquarters, and the railways. He had to mark these targets on aerial maps for American bombers.

“I traveled to Paris three times in two weeks to deliver these maps. They were taken to fields where couriers in small planes from England came for them. This was very gratifying to me. All of it was for bombing by your bombardiers!”

“Pierre was very brave,” said Gisèle. Pierre squeezed her hand.

“After Paris, I went into combat again with the Chauny organization, and our task was to prevent the boches from crossing the bridges. After setting the charges, I intended to reassemble my group, who had the weapons we had distributed. But when I set out alone on the Soissons road, I found myself facing maybe a hundred enemy soldiers! I was—how is it said?—shaking in my boots, but I did not reveal this. The lieutenant was only ten meters away. He called to me, and he lifted his rifle and aimed at me. ‘Raus!’ he said. Mon Dieu! But then someone interrupted him and he forgot about me. More and more the boches were disorganized. And so my life was spared!” Pierre smiled broadly.

“You were a lucky man!” said Marshall.

“I returned with my men to town, but we could do nothing there, for we were watched. Then two hours later the bridges blew up, and in the confusion we managed to get our weapons out of hiding—just in time to see the avant-garde libérateurs of Patton’s army! The rest of our work was to guide their way through town and to do away with the isolated boche, and to watch the roads to let our Allies make their triumphal advance toward Belgium.”

Marshall listened intently, “the isolated boche” echoing in his mind. “I want to say something,” he said, lifting his glass. He paused, trying to find words, knowing they were inadequate. “Thank you, Gisèle, for providing so well for me. Thanks to your son, too, for helping me with my French. Thank you, Pierre, all of you, for risking your lives. I propose a toast to you, my second family. Merci beaucoup.”

Marshall was amazed at himself. He had never offered a toast in his life until this moment. He felt warm from the wine, strangely happy, and slightly askew.


LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Nicolas returned, bringing his wife.

“Angeline wished to meet you, Marshall, so I went home and retrieved her,” he said. Angeline spontaneously gave Marshall a two-cheek kiss. She was sturdy and neat, with a fluffy blue scarf arranged over her blouse.

Pierre leaned toward Marshall. “My son and his wife have no son. I do not have grandsons to carry my name, but perhaps there is no need.” He lifted his glass. “Again, to your Albert.”

Angeline brushed her hand against Nicolas’s shoulder. “Don’t forget, Nicolas,” she said.

“Ah oui.” Nicolas opened a large shopping bag he had brought. “Do you recall, Marshall, that you gave your aviateur jacket to me?”

“Yes. I was afraid to keep it.” The Alberts had supplied him with warm civilian garments, and Marshall, who was fond of Nicolas, had given him the flying jacket.

Nicolas pulled the Bugs Bunny jacket from the bag. “Voilà!”

Speechless, Marshall held his old flying jacket. He caressed the worn leather and ran his hand inside the pockets.

“I wanted to preserve it for you if you ever came back,” Nicolas said.

“Nicolas displayed this jacket when we first met,” Angeline said, smiling. “He was very proud of it!”

“I was the envy of all my classmates after the war concluded and we could spill our secrets.”

The leather was cracked now. Bugs Bunny still looked sarcastic, his foot on the bomb and the carrot dangling from his hand. “Eh, what’s up, Doc?” Marshall said in the best Bugs voice he could manage, and everyone laughed.


AFTER GISÈLE HAD SEATED everyone in the small, overfurnished front room, Pierre said to Marshall, “Nicolas can help you find some of those persons who helped to shelter you before you arrived to us.”

Marshall had told Pierre and Gisèle about some of the nameless people he remembered, and now he told about the family in Paris who had hidden him after he left Chauny. He explained his admiration for the young daughter, who led Allied pilots through the city.

“It was hard to believe that a schoolgirl would be a guide for American aviators,” Marshall said.

“Oh, it was normal, Marshall!” said Pierre loudly. “The Germans would never suspect a schoolgirl. Therefore, many young girls were employed.”

“There were many girls in the Résistance,” said Angeline. “My aunt flirted with the Germans to distract them while her friends slipped food from the back of the supply truck! They were sixteen, she has told me, no more.”

“Be thankful, Marshall,” Gisèle said. “Your countrymen have never known such times, when children must become combatants.”

“I was hoping someone here would remember some of the contacts in Paris,” Marshall said. “There was a young man I remember especially. He came several times to the place where I was hiding, bringing messages and supplies, and he went south on the train with me. He was called Robert, but I have no idea what his last name was! I want to say it was Julien, but I don’t know why. Maybe that was his false name, his nom de guerre? I don’t even know if the family I stayed with in Paris was really named Vallon.”

“But you knew our names,” Pierre said. He explained that Vallon was more than likely correct. “The code names were usually a first name, used only for clandestine acts like sabotage. I was Emile.” He laughed. “Gisèle teased me, calling me Emile!”

“Dear Emile!” she said, patting his arm affectionately. “My secret lover!”

Nicolas offered to check with some local sources for information about the regional escape lines. “I will search for records of Vallons in Paris. And I would like to find those women in black for you,” he added.

Pierre said, “The chief contact for the Résistance in this area, the captain, who took his directions from London, is unfortunately disappeared—deceased.”

“His family may have a logbook or something,” Angeline suggested.

“I wrote nothing down,” said Pierre. “The work I did—all was in my head. It was dangerous for people to put names in writing. To put anything in writing.”

“We kept the address book of the aviateurs,” Gisèle reminded him.

Pierre served some homemade cider from an amber bottle with a clamp top. The cider was rich and strong, and Marshall sipped cautiously, remembering a pint of moonshine from his youth.

“We didn’t serve this on the airline,” he said.

Pierre smoked a cigarette and talked on about the war.

“To get a potato for supper was a clandestine act, but here in the country the farmers had more. When we heard the American tanks, and we saw the Germans on the street, standing around, confused, we grew bold. They knew it was all over, and we could not help taunting them even more than usual, asking them if they would eat their potatoes cooked the French way. We said, ‘You must be looking forward to going home! See the wife, the Kinder.’ ” Pierre stopped to laugh heartily, then continued more soberly. “Of course we knew and they knew that they might go to a prison when the Allies prevailed, or they might find conditions at home even worse than here, for us. We knew their country was bombed to hell. But we enjoyed saying, ‘Oh, it will be so grand to see the wife and the Kinder and go to the circus and eat nice strudel.’ We were cruel. We didn’t care. It was a joy. How could we restrain ourselves? But they still could have executed us all!”

He nodded contemplatively. “What causes this? Such barbarity. A war. All these horrors, when men sink lower than beasts. How did it happen? Can it happen again? This is why I encourage Nicolas and Angeline to inform their daughters. I never stopped informing Nicolas. Of course he was there. He saw it. But we must tell. We must tell.”

“I didn’t see everything,” said Nicolas. “But I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I am so fortunate that my parents and I survived.”

“Not Cousin Claude,” Pierre said.

“Oh, the man with the farm, where I hid?” Marshall asked.

“Oh, yes. Maybe I did not mention it when I wrote you—at the end of the war? Claude was killed in his barn. Blown up by accident—one of our own explosives. It was a terrible thing.”

“I will never forget that night,” said Gisèle. “That’s when we tried to protect Nicolas, and not let him see.”

“I was at his funeral,” Nicolas said. “I saw him dead. I knew what happened.”

Marshall pictured the barn. And Claude. And the cat. Félix.


NICOLAS AND ANGELINE offered to take Marshall to his train. As they prepared to leave the house, Nicolas handed the flight jacket to Marshall.

“For you.”

“Oh, no. It’s yours.”

“But I kept it for you, that you may have it again one day.”

“But I gave it to you, and your wife likes it! I have no use for it. I really want you to have it.”

Angeline seemed pleased, and Marshall was glad to relinquish the jacket again, but he thought later he might have misunderstood Nicolas’s offer. Damn my French, Marshall thought.


HE BOARDED AN EARLY-EVENING train at Chauny, and watched out the window as the growing twilight gradually dimmed the gray-green fields. The train paused at Noyon and Compiègne, stations he couldn’t recall. When he was on that train to Paris in 1944, he had been given precise instructions, but riding as a French worker had been difficult. He was wary and hesitant. Another flyer, the bombardier Delancey, was being sent with him, but they did not sit together. Marshall didn’t know the ordinary behaviors of French people on their daily business. Some women in mesh head wraps were laughing, but the rest of the car was quiet. At Compiègne a rush of people boarded the train, and a gray-haired man in a dark jacket sat by him, mumbling a question—probably “Is this seat taken?” Marshall thought his one-word reply had a scared-rabbit tone. He was sure he would be found out when he stood up, over six feet tall among the modestly sized Frenchmen. He was aware that the train could be bombed at any moment—bombs from the Allies, bombs from the Underground.

The particulars of experience often escaped him, but the outlines and the shapes of landscapes and skyscapes lingered in his mind. It was a discipline gained from flying, in always knowing where the North Star was, where the horizon lurked, which way was up. He had learned the outlines of airfields, the configurations of runways, the placement of hangars, the skylines of cities, the gentle curve of the ocean horizon, the wheeling constellations overhead.

From his seat on the train now, he watched as the farm fields yielded to ragged outskirts, which melted into factory buildings, which gave way to the switching yards of the Gare du Nord. It had been a long time since he had wanted to spend a day talking and laughing with a group of people. His stay with the Alberts in 1944 overlapped his visit now, as if he had jumped over time and might still be hiding behind an armoire or in a haystack with a cat. The shadowy figures of the brave people who had saved his life—in barns, in hidden rooms, on bicycles—were coming clearer, almost reachable. He welcomed them. After the ease and pleasure of returning to Chauny, he could almost believe that the girl in the blue beret would be waiting when the train pulled in to the station.