To Kingdom Come (28 page)

He thought Marie Therese might be a little sweet on him. The girl had spent a full day trying to help him learn basic French, although she might as well have tried teaching the bedpost. Learning a foreign tongue wasn’t his forte.

It was a struggle for him to walk. It was a struggle to sit. He spent most of the first three days lying in the big feather bed that had been occupied by Marcelle and her late husband, who had been killed in a farming accident six months earlier. The soft down in the mattress took the pressure off his back and allowed him to rest comfortably.

Marie Therese brought him his first breakfast in bed. Real coffee was unobtainable, and she served him a brew made of roasted chicory that she poured from two small pots, one with the hot chicory and the other filled with warm cream and sugar. There was a garden omelet to go with it, along with freshly baked bread and butter.

A fellow could get used to this, he decided.

Four days later, another woman arrived. Her name was Suzanne Bouchy, and she lived in the nearby village of La Chapelle-Champigny. She spoke English with an appealing French accent.

Marcelle had called her on the telephone the day after the Greek had arrived at the farm. The Bouchy family was well known for its anti-German feelings, and Marcelle thought she was the best person to contact about her new problem.

“I have a stray rabbit,” she had said to Suzanne over the party line connection. “Can you help me find a home for it?”

During her first visit to the farm, Suzanne Bouchy told the Greek that
Slightly Dangerous II
had crashed into a home on the south side of the village, killing the elderly woman who lived there. Five members of his crew had been found in the wreckage and buried nearby.

She said that she had tried to save his bombardier, Dick Loveless, from capture, but his leg had been badly broken in his jump, and the Germans had taken him into custody, along with Bill Frazier, the navigator, and Arthur Gay, the top turret gunner.

Suzanne said that a man would soon come to the farm to take him to get forged French identity papers. Once the papers were prepared, he would be escorted to Paris and turned over to an underground escape network that would deliver him to England.

Marcelle had put together a small wardrobe for him from the clothing of her late husband. On the day of his departure, Marie Therese came to wake him before dawn. After he was dressed and ready, she gave him a kiss good-bye on the mouth, saying she hoped they would meet again one day under less dangerous conditions.

The man was waiting for him downstairs. A tearful Marcelle wished him good fortune on his journey, and the man drove him to the local train station, bought him a ticket, and boarded the same train. Thirty minutes later, they got off at the cathedral town of Sens, and went directly to the mayor’s office.

These people are really connected, the Greek concluded after the mayor personally stamped the forged documents with his official seal. These people were all part of the French underground, he realized, not knowing how to adequately thank them for all they were doing.

The mayor introduced him to a Monsieur Maraceaux, who would be escorting him to Paris and hiding him in his home there. That afternoon, the two men boarded another train, this one filled with German soldiers. The Greek spent the whole trip staring out the window as the scenery rolled by, dreading the thought that someone would demand to see his papers.

After reaching Paris, it became obvious that Monsieur Maraceaux was an important man. His name was engraved on the façade of the imposing building that turned out to be his home. When the Greek climbed the stairs to the floor where he would be staying, two other escaped American fliers were already there. Warren Graff was a P-47 fighter pilot, and Frank Kimotek had been a gunner on a B-17.

They told him that the French underground was a big organization, and that hundreds of Allied fliers were hiding in every part of the city, awaiting their turn in the escape line.

For the Greek, the hours passed all too slowly. Monsieur Maraceaux had a large library, but the books were in French. Aside from eating and sleeping, there was little to do. Bored after several days of lethargy, the Greek and Warren Graff decided to explore the city. They both had excellent forged papers, and the risk would be slight.

Happy to be outdoors, they began walking the streets near their safe haven. The city was almost bare of automobiles. What vehicles they saw were powered by engines that burned charcoal. The cafés they passed served only table wine, and there were few patrons. Gay Paris was no longer gay.

Warren had stopped to look at a camera on display in one of the shops. The Greek had kept on walking. As he approached the next intersection, a German officer came around the corner and halted in front of him.

He was wearing a khaki uniform with polished calf-length brown boots. The Wehrmacht officer’s uniform was clean and pressed, but well worn. An iron cross adorned his throat. He looked like a professional.

What an idiot I am, thought the Greek, realizing he had not only jeopardized his own freedom but that of the people he had entrusted his life to. What do I do now?

The Wehrmacht officer was demanding something of him in an imperious tone. The Greek thought he might be asking for directions. The fact that he was speaking German meant he didn’t know any more French than the Greek did.

The officer was glaring at him, waiting for an answer. In response, the Greek threw up his hands in European fashion and began speaking Greek phrases he had learned around his parents’ kitchen table in Norfolk. Disgusted, the officer clicked his heels and stalked off.

Warren Graffhad watched the whole thing unfold from the camera shop and was sure the Greek was about to be arrested. After that incident, they decided to stay in the apartment.

It was the afternoon of September 15 when they heard a familiar rumbling overhead that sounded like distant thunder. A few seconds later, they knew it wasn’t thunder. It was a big stream of heavy bombers, heading for Paris.

Going to the top floor, they watched them through one of the windows.

Even though the formation of Fortresses might soon be dropping their payloads right on top of them, the two Americans felt a thrill of pleasure at seeing them rumbling toward the southern edge of the city.

A minute later, the antiaircraft batteries deployed across Paris began opening up at the leading combat wing. It was the first time the Greek had ever been on the ground looking up at an attack. The German batteries were pumping hundreds of shells into the sky, turning parts of it almost black with explosions as the gunners tried to find the range.

The booming thunder went on and on, with the 88s shooting nonstop at the intruders. He saw a Fortress come shrieking down. It was on fire as it plunged toward earth, and exploded in a big fireball a mile or two away.

Suddenly it seemed to be raining jagged metal. Thousands of cannon shell fragments from the intense barrage, each one the size of his little finger, were raining down all over Paris.

Unlike hard rain, these drops were potentially lethal. He could hear them clattering like steel hail as they landed on the metal roofs and on the cobblestone streets below. This was no summer shower. It went on for at least fifteen minutes as the bomb groups came over to drop their payloads on the targets before turning for home.

As the last roar of the Wright Cyclone engines faded into the distance, the Greek wondered if the 388th, or whatever was left of it after Stuttgart, had been up there in the bomber stream. He grinned at the possibility he might have been bombed by his own group.

Four miles above him, Major Ralph Jarrendt and the rest of the 388th headed back to Knettishall, England, after bombing the Hispano-Suiza Aero Engine Works in southern Paris.

Jarrendt was in the lead wing of the bomber train, once more part of the low group to the 96th. Even though the 388th had lost eleven planes on the Stuttgart mission, new replacements had arrived to make up the difference.

Captain Robert Bernard was leading the high squadron of the 388th. He had taken over Ted Wilken’s plane,
Battlin Betsy
. It was supposed to be a lucky ship, and so far it was living up to expectations.

Hitting the Road

Saturday, 25 September 1943
Sainte-Savine, France
Second Lieutenant Warren Porter Laws

T
he previous two weeks had proved to be both the greatest trial and the greatest adventure of his life. No longer was he the sheltered boy forced to remain at home on Halloween because of his mother’s fears. Warren Laws had survived a horrific air battle and had so far escaped the Germans.

Following the fiery deaths of Ted Wilken and the rest of
Patricia
’s crew, he and Joe Schwartzkopf had spent their first hours in France hiding in a dense thicket near the village of Montgueux. A dozen German soldiers had searched for them unsuccessfully for most of that day.

Warren had been carrying an escape kit inside his flight suit. In addition to chocolate, pain medication, bandages, and a pocket compass, it included a small map of Western Europe. While they hid in the thicket, Joe attempted to bandage Warren’s arm wound as well as his burned hands and fingers. Afterward, Warren carefully examined the map.

In the escape classes Warren had taken at Knettishall, flight crews had been told that the two best escape destinations from France were Switzerland and Spain. He wasn’t sure where
Patricia
had gone down, but the route they had flown appeared to be a lot closer to Switzerland.

When the German search party finally gave up and drove away in their trucks, the Americans waited two hours to be sure it wasn’t a ruse, and then crawled out of their thicket.

A farmer was plowing a nearby field. Warren decided to ask the farmer where they were. He had taken two years of French in high school, and was carrying a pocket-sized French-English dictionary.

There was no need for a lengthy conversation. As soon as Warren showed him the map, the farmer pointed to a spot southeast of Paris. They were apparently near the town of Troyes, roughly ninety miles southeast of Paris and about 150 miles northwest of Bern, Switzerland. Spain was at least four hundred miles away.

Using the compass, Warren and Joe set off to the southeast.

Two miles away, Marcel Vergeot, a café owner in the village of Torvilliers and a member of the French underground, had seen
Patricia
falling to earth earlier that morning. By the time he reached the crash site on his bicycle, the Germans had recovered the bodies of eight crewmen, and they were lying on the ground near the plane.

Marcel Vergeot knew the American bombers carried a crew of ten. At the crash scene, a young man from Montgueux whispered to him that he had seen parachutes, and Vergeot concluded that there were at least two survivors. He assumed they would probably head for Switzerland, which meant they had to follow one of two routes southeast.

Vergeot wanted to help the Americans, but after three years of German occupation, he had learned to be very cautious. Other men had tried to help downed Allied airmen. They had been arrested and were never seen again. He wrote down the numbers on the vertical stabilizer of the plane: 349.

Still heading southeast away from the crashed
Patricia
, Warren decided they should keep walking as far as their energy allowed. After crossing a railroad track and a succession of fields, they came to a small orchard, and Joe stopped to fill his pockets with green apples. Farther on, they came to a macadam road heading southeast. Warren decided to follow it.

Aside from an occasional horse-drawn cart, there was no vehicular traffic in the French countryside. A few kilometers down the road, they passed a large farmhouse. Too late to hide, they spotted a group of men coming out of its tree-lined entrance. The Frenchmen’s conversation immediately stopped. As the two fliers walked past, the Frenchmen stared at Warren’s bloody flight suit.

The encounter filled him with foreboding. Any one of those civilians could easily turn them in for a reward. Crossing 150 miles of France on foot suddenly seemed hopeless.

Warren was now in agonizing pain from his burned hands and shoulder wound. As darkness fell he became feverish and told Joe he had to stop. Joe found a clump of bushes near the road where they could hide. Through the long night, Warren was wracked by chills. Joe gave him his own flight jacket to try to keep him warm.

Early the next morning, Marcel Vergeot told his twelve-year-old son, Daniel, to take his bicycle and ride out several miles along the only two roads that led southeast. If he saw any strangers along the road, he wasn’t to talk to them, but to immediately return home and tell him their location.

As dawn broke, Warren’s raw fingers were swollen like blood sausages. Weak from fever, he wasn’t sure how long he could walk. He told Joe that he would have a much better chance to escape if he went on alone.

Joe shook his head. They would escape together or be captured together, he said, telling Warren he would look out for him as long as they remained free. After eating some green apples for breakfast, they crawled out of the thicket and began walking again.

They had barely traveled a mile when Warren was racked by chills again and had to stop. Once more, he told Joe to leave him. Again, Joe refused. The two men had begun walking again when they were overtaken by a boy on a bicycle. The boy stared at them as he passed by, then turned around and disappeared in the same direction he had come.

An hour later, two men on bicycles passed them and pulled off the road into a copse of woods. As Warren and Joe came up, one of the Frenchmen motioned for them to join him under the cover of the trees.

Marcel Vergeot asked them if they were American fliers, and Warren said yes. Marcel showed him a piece of paper with three numbers on it and asked if they were the numbers of his airplane. The numbers were 329. Warren shook his head and said no.