The Girl in the Blue Beret (11 page)

He remembered bicycling from here to the train station the day he left for Paris.

He was hesitating about going to the front door when a couple with a dog passed by and glanced at him curiously. He started to move on. Then a small gray Renault pulled into the driveway. The driver emerged and headed for the house. He was carrying a yard-long baguette and a plastic grocery bag.

“Nicolas?” Marshall said.

The man turned.
“Oui?”

13.

M
ARSHALL 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.”