The Girl in the Blue Beret

36.



HE FOUND ANNETTE GROOMING THE CHESTNUT HORSE IN THE small field next to the compound. Bernard came running to him, barking joyfully. Marshall said “Bonjour” to him. Bernard was a briard, she had told him, a French breed of herd dog. She waved, and Marshall made his way through a wooden gate toward the shed, a shelter for the horses. Next to the field was a sizable garden, with bald cabbage heads, thin sticks supporting bean vines, and some sprawling vines of melons or perhaps pumpkins. He recognized tomatoes.

After greeting him warmly—the two-cheek kiss this time—she explained that she had ridden down to the river on some back trails. He decided she smelled like lavender—as if he knew his scents.

“Go on, Charleroi,” she said affectionately to the horse, who had a splotch on his forehead shaped like Great Britain.

Charleroi galloped off, and Annette and Marshall trotted to the house.

While she was changing her clothes, he wandered around the courtyard. The chickens were scratching in the dirt. Bernard, enthusiastic and attentive, accompanied him, like a guide pointing out the sights. Marshall exchanged bonjours with the workmen, who were repairing the stonework of some of the small buildings. He did not see the woman with the rake. He peeked into the small stone henhouse, observed the roosts, smelled the heavy aroma. He recalled his grandmother’s ramshackle chicken house, which he had not thought of in years. He remembered reaching under a hen to steal an egg, his other hand pushing her head aside. He remembered his grandmother giving chickens grit for their craws, a gravelly stuff with tiny seashells in it. Why did they need grit for their craws? He had no idea.

“I wish you had gone riding with me this morning—it was so lovely!” Annette said, finding him examining some old farm machinery. He guessed that the rusty implement he was studying was a harrow, to be hitched to horses. It was structured with intricate tines.

“As a boy I rode Shetland ponies at the fair. They were about the size of Bernard.” He gave the dog a vigorous pat. “You’re right. I wanted Pegasus.”

She laughed. “Of course. That was the way with you boys. Your airplanes were so romantic.”

“Until they crashed,” he said.

“The war was very hard for everyone, as you know. But if it weren’t for our ‘visitors,’ it would have been even more bleak.” She waved her hand in front of her face, as if to erase the thought. “I’m so happy you returned home safely!”

She was a stylish, confident woman—not girlish like Caroline, in those Indian getups and jeans. Annette was wearing dark slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt. He felt she was making no statements. She was just being herself.


SHE INSISTED ON SHOWING him some of the scenery of the region. She drove her car, so that he was free to look around. He had always thought the French were notoriously daring behind the wheel, but she drove sensibly. The windows were down, and the rush of wind reminded him of the early days flying in an open cockpit. It would not have occurred to him to sightsee this way, he explained to her. He had always seen the landscape from above, where fields and rivers became abstract—elements of a painting. Now it was as though he were in a labyrinth, circling and winding and backtracking—with no headers or gauges or timetables. Without ailerons and throttles, riding became a pleasurable drift.

Annette’s husband had practiced in a wide area—driving to people who owned large farm animals, going out on calls at dawn or late at night, any time of day—and she still kept in touch with many of the clients. She stopped at a vineyard, where she bought some bottles of wine from a man who had a pair of friendly briards. Then she drove to another village to take flowers to an ailing man who kept geese.

“Now, a surprise,” she announced, as they pulled back onto the main road. “I have a friend who is passionate to meet you. She is another who helped to hide pilots in the war, and her experience was so much more dramatic than mine. She had a great deal of courage. I want you to hear what she did during the war. It is extraordinary.”

The friend, a schoolteacher, lived in a town near Angoulême. Their common past aiding Allied aviators had drawn Annette and Odile Durand together.

“I thought you and your parents were pretty extraordinary,” Marshall said.

Annette laughed. “Oh, we did what was necessary,” she said. “Nothing more.” She slowed down to make a turn. “Odile’s daughter married last year and has gone away on some type of global adventure with her new husband. Odile is troubled—there are so many dangers in the world.”

Annette turned into a street so narrow they nearly scraped the walls on both sides. Expertly she pulled into a tiny apron of stone in front of a small stucco house with a red-tile roof. The door flew open immediately.

The women exchanged kisses, with affectionate hugs.

“Voilà, my pilot!” Annette said.

“Monsieur, monsieur, bienvenue. I am delighted.”

Odile grabbed him and bussed both cheeks. She was small and wiry.

“Odile, I have brought you some eggs,” Annette said. “My chickens engage themselves in a contest, to lay so many eggs!”

“Merci beaucoup, Annette. Tu es très gentille.”

They sat in the small garden behind the house. It was quiet except for the chatter of the women. Odile said her daughter had written from Bangkok and had ridden an elephant. “Mon Dieu, what next!”

“Remember, Odile, what you were doing at her age. She will be all right.”

“Elephants I trust, but she and Giscard are on airplanes so often, and I do worry about that. Tell me, monsieur, am I right to worry?”

“Travel today is simple, madame,” he said. “Airline travel is safe.”

“Did you ever have a crash?”

“No, no, not in the airlines.”

“Sometimes they crash.”

“If you were to look at a timetable, madame,” he said, like a professor, “you would see how many flights there are in one day just on one airline—thousands. And they all arrive safely.”

“Marshall knows everything about airplanes,” said Annette assuringly.

Marshall enjoyed watching Annette with her friend. Annette’s good humor balanced Odile’s sober nervousness.

After Odile had served them some of the wine Annette had brought, Annette urged her to tell Marshall about her pilots in the war. Odile jumped up, grasped both of his hands, and gazed hard into his eyes for a moment. She was close to his age, he thought. Her hair was gray, with springy curls running willy-nilly up her temples.

“I am so glad you have come,” she said. She let go of his hands and sat down.

Quickly she launched into her tale, as though she had been waiting for the chance to blurt it out. Her voice was raspy, as if she was getting over a bad cold, but her French was clear, easy for Marshall to follow. Annette sat comfortably in a straight-backed chair, and Marshall cocked his chair onto its two back legs, rocking a bit now and then.

Odile had been a very young teacher during the war, on her first teaching assignment, in a coastal village above Bordeaux. The Occupation there was relatively peaceful. The Germans, worried about the British and the Americans, kept a nervous watch on the beaches. Odile liked to walk along the seashore, but the Germans patrolled it and had put up a barrier. She could see their bunkers five kilometers down the shore. The school stood between the beach and a large forest, crisscrossed by many local paths. When the weather was good she liked to take the schoolchildren to a clearing in the forest, where there was a certain high rock. They could find berries in the woods and have picnics on the rock.

The school was one large room. She lived with her aunt in the other wing of the building, on the first floor.

Odile’s voice grew dramatic. Marshall leaned forward, settling his chair on all fours.

“One Sunday, a knock came on the door. It was a handsome German officer! He was very polite, and he spoke good French. He introduced himself, Hans Wetzel. He was very well-mannered. Very correct.

“I must emphasize that they were always well-mannered, but my aunt had fear that there was a cauldron of wickedness stirring. I hated the Germans because my Jean was at their labor camp, far away. Jean and I were engaged for only six months when he was sent away.

“The German addressed my aunt and me, ‘Mesdames, I come to requisition the school. We need this building to lodge our officers.’

“I drew myself up to my full height and faced this young officer—and I refused! ‘Where would the children have their lessons?’ I asked. ‘The nearest other school is nine kilometers! These children are all from this village. You can’t force little children to walk nine kilometers!’ I bargained with him. I said he could live upstairs, above our living quarters, and the school could go on. To my aunt’s amazement, the German agreed. He clicked his heels, bowed, and declared he would take the rooms above the school for his own lodging and let the school proceed. He said he would find other facilities for the other officers.

“My aunt had fear that the Germans would then take advantage of us, billeting in quarters near our own, but I was determined not to deprive the children of their education.”

“You were very brave to challenge a German like that,” Marshall said.

“I am not surprised,” said Annette. “Of course Odile could handle him!”

Odile continued. The German officer moved in upstairs. He was an aristocrat, educated at the Sorbonne. He displayed pictures of his wife and two small children. The aunt, despite her fearfulness, enjoyed vexing the German. Out in the corridor, she hung a portrait of her young husband, who had died in the first war. She draped black silk around the frame. The German officer spoke to her of the young French officer in the portrait. Then he clicked his heels and saluted.

“Each time he went through the corridor he saluted the portrait!” Odile cried with laughter. “We heard him come through the back door at night, walk quietly down the dark corridor, and then we heard the heel-clicking when he got to the portrait. This gave my aunt enormous pleasure!”

The wine relaxed Marshall. He enjoyed watching Annette’s delight in her friend. He was listening attentively to Odile, but his thoughts of Annette formed an undercurrent, a warm tide that pulled him. He fiddled with some broken twigs that had fallen onto the table, arranging them into idle patterns.

On January 5, 1944, a sunny afternoon in winter, Odile was outside for recess with the students when Allied bombers flew over, just beyond the forest. Suddenly they saw three parachutists floating down above the trees. The week before, two parachutists had landed in a nearby village, and some citizens had handed them over to the Germans for reward money. She had promised herself that if she ever saw parachutists, she would try to help them. And here they were. They landed among the pines, only two hundred meters from the school. Quickly, she asked the oldest student to get the children inside and to keep them busy.

“Of course the students always obeyed the schoolteacher!” Annette said.

“Bien sûr,” said Odile. “At that time, the authority of a schoolteacher was incontestable.”

A German patrolling on his bicycle on the street in front of the school saw through the window that school was in session. As soon as she was sure he would remain in front, on the road, young Odile enlisted the help of a neighbor. They scurried into the forest, where they found one of the aviators tangled in a bush.

A man had already reached the site, coming from one of the other paths into the forest.

“Stupéfaction! I knew this man!” she cried. He was a donneur, one of the men who had turned a parachutist over to the Germans the week before for the reward.

“I said to him, ‘I’m taking care of this, monsieur. You return to the village.’ Once again, as the teacher I commanded respect, so the donneur left!”

“What about the parachute?” Marshall asked. The twigs he had been playing with scattered on the stones.

Odile and her neighbor helped the American gather his parachute and hide it in some brush. They insisted that he hide in the thick bushes until dark, and they promised to bring clothing and food.

“On the way back to the school, I encountered a workman who was pushing an American, slightly wounded, in a donkey cart. He was taking him to the factory to turn him in. I said, ‘You can’t do that!’ I stated that it would be treason to France if he turned the man in for money.”

“Odile was very courageous,” Annette said, turning to Marshall.

“The workman left,” Odile said. “And I hid the second American with the first. They were glad to see each other, and they let out a few loud sounds. I hushed them. Then they began to search for their cigarettes. I cautioned them—no, no, messieurs! It is dangerous!

“I did what I could with the flyer’s wounds. He had a little first-aid box with some medicine and patches. I told them, ‘I’m going to leave you here right now, because we cannot take you into a home in the day. The Germans will be looking. If their dogs sniff you out, do not resist. If you do, you will be killed. If you do not resist, the worst that can happen is that you will be a prisoner of war. Be silent. Remain hidden. Do not smoke.’ I instructed them carefully, repeating my cautions, especially because I was uncertain of my English.”

While the schoolchildren went home for lunch, Odile, her aunt, and the neighbor gathered supplies and contacted people who could help harbor two Americans. When the students returned, a boy was crying, telling her that his parents had seen the third parachutist hanging at the top of a pine tree, with a pool of blood at the bottom.

“I instructed this boy very carefully. ‘You must go home right now,’ I said. ‘Tell your parents to cut that tree down and rescue the American before he loses any more blood.’ So this child did just that. His parents cut down the tree, but they declared him to the authorities because he needed hospitalization. If they had cut the tree earlier, he might have survived. His arm was torn almost off. I went to their house immediately, but by then it was clear he was dying from the loss of his blood. His last word, I will never forget, was ‘coffee.’ ”

Marshall had been listening intently. The arm, the falling pine tree. He could easily imagine coffee being his own dying request. But landing in a tree, hanging there, his arm wrenched …

“I will never forget the Germans who came to take him to the hospital,” Odile was saying. “They came into the house, saw he was dead, and one lifted him by the arm and head, the other the feet. They swung him through the house as if he were a heavy sack of potatoes, and they threw him onto their vehicle, on top of some green canvas bundles. He landed facing the sky, limbs spread, his eyes still open. They drove away without a word. They would salute a portrait of a stranger long dead but treat a fresh body like this! I was trembling with furor and fear. I knew we had a difficult job to undertake.”

“Were the other two all right?” Marshall asked.

“In the night I went to get them. They were still in the bush, and to my relief I did not smell cigarettes. They had not smoked. I stowed them in a barn, and the next night I found a room for them with a factory worker. Several people helped me to move them. They spent nights in different homes. One night they were in our kitchen! The German officer went down the corridor, as usual, and we heard him salute the portrait. The Americans were crouched behind the flour barrel in the storage pantry. My aunt decided that one night was all she could bear of having Americans and Germans in such close quarters. The next night we smuggled them out to another home. Everyone in the village knew! They cooperated because I was the teacher. I think the students all knew, but we did not speak of it at school.

“We had much work to do to get clothing for the aviateurs. The shoemaker in the village produced some coarse work boots, and I measured them for vests and trousers. I remember there was a beret that we had to stretch.”

In the end, the baker drove the airmen to another village in his car. He was allowed a car and a pass into the forbidden coastal zone, for he had to deliver his bread to the Germans. By then the Americans were dressed as French workers, with false papers. The baker knew a group that could arrange their passage across the Pyrenees.

“I was so nervous. I thought we would never get all the details to work. On the Sunday before they left, I went to the house where they were staying to give them some instructions, and a German spotted me on the road.

“ ‘What are you doing, miss?’ he asked. ‘You usually go home to your parents on the weekends.’

“ ‘Oh, I couldn’t go this weekend,’ I said. ‘I had schoolwork to do. What are you doing here, monsieur?’

“ ‘I am looking for my lost dog,’ he said.

“The aviateurs returned to England safely. The Résistance received a message through the BBC. But after the war, the aviateurs never answered my letters. I kept their American dollars for them. I had told them they must not be caught with American dollars. I didn’t know what to do with the money. I kept it until 1947, and finally my mother suggested I give it to charity.”

Odile took a sip of her wine, set the glass down, and folded her hands neatly in her lap. Marshall was moved, identifying with the parachutists, remembering being dressed as a workman and plunked down in someone’s car, being driven along dark roads.

Annette said, “Thank you, Odile. You see, Marshall, here is courage.”

“The parachutes—we gathered them, and after the war we sewed them into clothing. I made my wedding dress from one of the parachutes.” Odile smiled. “My Jean returned to me.”

Annette, her voice slightly unsteady, urged Marshall to tell about his own evasion.

He gave Odile a truncated account of his escape from France, making light of his own actions while praising the families who had helped him.

“I might not be alive if it weren’t for people like Annette and her family,” Marshall said.

“Bien sûr, monsieur. It is my effort to make all the witnesses of that time go out to the public and speak about it, but Annette has not been ready to do this yet.” Odile nudged Annette affectionately. “At the school I am able to talk about it, although some of the parents might prefer I did not. I don’t frighten the children. I merely talk to them of history and what France endured when our country was assaulted, when it was taken over and we were robbed of our resources. The children take notice. They sense that there is something in the past, a great storm cloud hanging over us. They know this from home.”

“Tell us about the boy who drew the swastika in his notebook,” Annette said.

“Oh, mon Dieu! I said, ‘Do you know what that is, young man?’ I was very stern. He was terrified and he said no.

“ ‘It is the Nazi symbol of hatred, of all the darkness that was rained down upon France.’ I told him this with much severity! I made him hold out his palm for the ruler. It made him cry, and it is necessary for the boys to hold their tears.” She sighed. “I was filled with remorse later, but I decided that what I did was correct.”

“So many don’t know,” said Annette. “It is too painful for their parents to tell them.”

“Yes. And now there are attempts to change the history, to say the worst atrocities never happened.” Odile’s voice grew shrill.

“The négationistes!” Annette said.

“Annette teaches art classes. That is perfect, because she could instruct the young ones about what it was like during the war, but perhaps she hasn’t the heart. I am trying to persuade her.” Odile’s voice dropped.

“I might not be here if she hadn’t helped me in 1944,” Marshall reiterated.

“I see how eagerly you listened, and I feel you are a friend. You can imagine the three men who parachuted into my schoolyard that distant day.”

“Yes.”

“It makes me enormously unhappy that I never heard from them again. I wrote to them. They had given me their addresses, but they never responded.”

“A lot could have happened to them on the way home.”

“I know they reached England, although I’m sure they suffered from crossing the Pyrenees when it was still winter.”


LATER, WHEN ANNETTE and Marshall said their goodbyes, Odile implored Marshall to locate the two Americans flyers for her. “I will write their names for you.”

“I’ll do what I can.” Marshall wasn’t confident, but he said he would try. He thanked her for telling her memories.

Odile clasped both of Marshall’s hands in hers.

“Please help me to find my pilots,” she pleaded.