The Girl in the Blue Beret Read online

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  BOBBIE ANN MASON

  FICTION

  NANCY CULPEPPER

  AN ATOMIC ROMANCE

  ZIGZAGGING DOWN A WILD TRAIL

  MIDNIGHT MAGIC

  FEATHER CROWNS

  LOVE LIFE

  SPENCE + LILA

  IN COUNTRY

  SHILOH AND OTHER STORIES

  NONFICTION

  ELVIS PRESLEY

  CLEAR SPRINGS

  THE GIRL SLEUTH

  NABOKOV’S GARDEN

  Copyright © 2011 by Bobbie Ann Mason

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are

  registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Mason, Bobbie Ann.

  The girl in the blue beret: a novel / by Bobbie Ann Mason.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-679-60494-5

  1. World War, 1939–1945—Aerial operations—Fiction. 2. World

  War, 1939–1945—Underground movements—Europe—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3563.A7877G57 2011

  813’.54—dc22 2010036861

  www.atrandom.com

  Jacket design: Anna Bauer

  Jacket photograph: Adoc-photos/Art Resource, NY

  v3.1_r1

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  My late father-in-law, co-pilot of an Allied bomber shot down by a German fighter plane over Belgium during the Second World War, owed his eventual escape from Occupied Europe to the help he received from members of the French Resistance, including a teenager he would remember as “the girl in the blue beret.” Inspired by my father-in-law’s wartime experience, The Girl in the Blue Beret is nonetheless a work of fiction: names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of my imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental and unintentional.

  DEDICATED TO

  MICHÈLE AGNIEL

  AND TO THE MEMORY OF

  BARNEY RAWLINGS

  (1920–2004)

  BLISS WAS IT IN THAT DAWN TO BE ALIVE,

  BUT TO BE YOUNG WAS VERY HEAVEN!

  —WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, “The Prelude”

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Escape and Evasion

  Flight Crew: The Dirty Lily

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  Selected Bibliography

  About the Author

  ESCAPE AND EVASION

  DURING WORLD WAR II, THOUSANDS OF ALLIED AVIATORS CRASHED OR parachuted into Occupied Europe. A number of escape-and-evasion networks helped to hide them and send them safely back to their bases in England. Thousands of Europeans risked their lives by hiding the airmen in their homes, providing false identity papers, and smuggling them by sea to England or across the Pyrenees to Spain. Between 1942 and 1944, more than three thousand British and American downed flyers successfully evaded capture with the help of an unknown number of ordinary citizens, who risked being shot or sent to a concentration camp.

  FLIGHT CREW THE DIRTY LILY

  Molesworth Airfield, Station 107, England

  303RD BOMB GROUP, B-17G

  SQUADRON 124

  MISSION TO FRANKFURT, GERMANY

  January 31, 1944

  Captain LAWRENCE WEBB

  Co-pilot MARSHALL STONE

  Bombardier AL GRAINGER

  Navigator TONY CAMPANELLO

  Top-Turret Gunner, JAMES FORD

  Flight Engineer

  Radio Operator BOB HADLEY

  Ball-Turret Gunner BOBBY REDBURN

  Left Waist Gunner HOOTIE WILLIAMS

  Right Waist Gunner CHICK COCHRAN

  Tail Gunner DON STEWART

  1.

  AS THE LONG FIELD CAME INTO VIEW, MARSHALL STONE FELT HIS breathing quicken, a rush of doves flying from his chest. The landscape was surprisingly familiar, its contours and borders fresh in his memory, even though he had been here only fleetingly thirty-six years ago. Lucien Lombard, who had brought him here today, knew the field intimately, for it had been in his family for generations.

  “It was over there beside that tree, monsieur,” Lucien said, pointing toward the center of the field, where an awkward sycamore hovered over a patch of unruly vegetation.

  “There was no tree then,” Marshall said.

  “That is true.”

  They walked through the furrowed field toward the tree, Lucien’s sturdy brown boots mushing the mud, Marshall following in borrowed Wellingtons. He was silent, his memory of the crash landing superimposed on the scene in front of him, as if there were a small movie projector in his mind. The Flying Fortress, the B-17, the heavy bomber the crew called the Dirty Lily, had been returning from a mission to Frankfurt.

  “The airplane came down just there,” said Lucien as they neared the tree.

  Lucien was elderly—probably in his eighties, Marshall thought—but he had a strong, erect physique, and he walked with a quick, determined step. His hair was thin, nearly white, his face smooth and firm.

  “Normally a farmer would not permit a tree to thrive in his field,” he said. “But this tree marks the site.”

  Unexpectedly, Marshall Stone began to cry. Embarrassed, he turned his face aside. He was a captain of transatlantic jumbo jets, a man who did not show weakness. He was alarmed by his emotion.

  Lucien Lombard nodded. “I know, monsieur,” he said.

  In Marshall’s mind, the crumpled B-17 lay before him in the center of the field. He recalled that the plane had been lined up with the neatly plowed furrows.

  The deep, rumbling sound of a vast formation of B-17s roared through Marshall’s memory now. The steady, violent, rocking flight toward target. The sight
of Focke-Wulf 190s—angry hornets darting crazily. The black bursts of flak floating like tumbleweeds strewn on a western highway. The fuselage flak-peppered. Slipping down into the cloud deck, flying for more than an hour unprotected. Over Belgium, hit again. The nose cone shattering. The pilot panicking.

  Marshall, the co-pilot, took the controls and brought the Dirty Lily down. A belly landing on this foreign soil. There was no time to jettison the ball turret. Only as they were coming down did Marshall see that Lawrence Webb, the pilot, was unconscious. The Fort grazed the top of a tall hedgerow and slid in with a jolt, grinding to a hard stop. The crew scrambled out. Marshall and the flight engineer wrestled Webb’s slack body from the plane. The navigator’s face was torn, bloodied. The fuselage was burning. Machine-gun rounds were exploding at the gun stations. Marshall didn’t see the tail gunner anywhere. The left waist gunner lay on the ground, motionless.

  Marshall had been just twenty-three years old then. Now he was nearly sixty, and he had come to see this place again at last. He was crying for the kids in the B-17, the youngsters who had staked their lives on their Flying Fortress. He hadn’t known he had pent up such a reservoir of emotion, even though he probably thought about the downing of the B-17 every day. He willed his tears to stop.

  Lucien Lombard had seen the plane come down near the village, and he rushed to help the crew, but Marshall didn’t remember him.

  Now Lucien said, “It is like yesterday.”

  Marshall toed a weed-topped clod of dirt. “The worst day of my life,” he said. “Some bad memories.”

  “Never mind, monsieur. It had its part.”

  Several people were crossing the field, headed toward them. They had arrived in a gray van with the name of a hardware store on the side.

  “Everyone from the village has heard of your visit,” said Lucien. “You are a hero.”

  “Non. I did very little.” Marshall was ashamed.

  Lucien introduced him to the group. They were all smiling at him and speaking rapidly. When Marshall could not follow some of their thickly accented French, Lucien explained that everyone there remembered the crash. Three families had sheltered members of the crew, and Dr. Bequet had treated the wounded.

  “I’m very grateful,” Marshall said, shaking the doctor’s hand.

  “It was necessary to help.”

  More introductions and small talk followed. Marshall noticed two men scanning the ground. Lucien explained that people still found pieces of metal there—bullet casings, rivets, and once even a warped propeller blade. Marshall thought of how he had torn up the field when he came zigzagging down that day.

  A man in a cloth cap and wool scarf stepped forward and touched Marshall’s arm.

  “Oui, it is sad, monsieur,” the man said. He regarded Marshall in a kindly way and smiled. His face was leathery but younger than Marshall’s. He seemed familiar.

  “You were the boy who helped me!” Marshall said, astonished.

  “Oui. C’est moi.”

  “You offered me a cigarette.”

  The man laughed. His taut, weathered cheeks seemed to blush. “Bien sûr. I would never forget that day. The cigarettes I had obtained for my father.”

  “That was my very first Gauloises,” Marshall said.

  “You were my first Américain,” the man said, smiling. “I am Henri Lechat.”

  They shook hands, the younger man first removing his glove.

  “You warned me that the Germans were coming,” Marshall said.

  Henri nodded. “It is true. You had no French then, and I had no English.”

  “But I knew. We communicated somehow.”

  Marshall’s voice broke on the word communicated.

  “We will never forget, monsieur.”

  “You told me to run,” Marshall said, recalling how he had stowed the cigarette in the inner pocket of his leather jacket. Now he felt his tears well up again.

  Henri tugged on his scarf. “I told you to hide in the woods, and you comprehended.”

  Recalling the boy’s urgency, Marshall tried to laugh. Henri had raced up, calling a warning. Pointing back the way he had come, he cried, “Les Allemands! Les Allemands!” Then, pointing to the woods in the other direction, he shouted, “Allez-y!” Marshall did not see any Germans, and he would not leave until all the crew was out. The bombardier was wounded in the shoulder, and the navigator had a shattered leg. The tail gunner appeared; he had hopped out easily. The left waist gunner was unconscious and had to be pulled from the fuselage window. Marshall was relieved to see the ball-turret gunner, who was limping toward the church with a man carrying a shovel. Someone said the right waist gunner had parachuted. The pilot was lying on the frozen ground, his eyes closed. Fire was leaping from the plane.

  Marshall knelt by Webb, trying to wake him. Nothing. Someone squatted beside Marshall and opened Webb’s jacket.

  “Docteur,” the woman said, pointing toward the village. She pointed in the opposite direction, toward the woods, and said, “Go.”

  Marshall stood. The flight engineer appeared at his side. “Let’s go,” he said. “Everybody’s out.”

  Several of the villagers were making urgent gestures toward the road. German troops would be here in moments. Marshall knew that they converged on every fallen plane, to arrest the Allied aviators and to salvage the wrecked metal for their own planes. The German fighter that had downed them was circling low overhead. Marshall began running toward the woods.

  Had the Germans shot anyone from the village for helping the American flyers? Marshall wondered now, but he did not want to ask. He had tried to be sure all the crew were out, and then he left the scene. In the years after, he didn’t probe into the aftermath. He lived another life.

  “We were so thankful to you, monsieur,” one of the men was saying. “When your planes flew over we knew we would be liberated one day.”

  Marshall nodded.

  A stocky woman with gray, thick hair and a genial, wrinkled face said, “The airplanes flying toward Germany in those days—there were hundreds of them. We rejoiced to see them crossing the sky.”

  Henri kicked dirt from his leather boot. “I didn’t know at that age everything that was understood by the adults. But I knew the deprivation, the difficulties, the secrecy. Even the children knew the crisis.”

  Cautiously, Marshall asked, “Did the Germans arrest anybody for helping us?”

  “Oh, non, monsieur.” Henri paused. “Not that day.”

  Lucien Lombard clasped Henri’s shoulder and said, “The father of this one was killed—shot on his bicycle, on his way home after convoying one of your aviateurs across the border to France.”

  Henri said, “I had to grow up quickly. I had the responsibilities then for my mother and my sisters.”

  Lucien said, “His family hid that aviateur in their barn for a time.”

  Marshall recoiled. He could see the waist gunner lying motionless across the furrows. He saw himself running into the woods. He saw the boy’s face. The plane was on fire.

  Marshall had decided to return to this place finally, knowing it was time to confront his past failure. He had expected to be alone in the field, and he had not thought anyone would remember. The news of the death of the boy’s father jolted him. He had never heard about that. In all these years, he had thought little about the people who had come running to the downed airplane. He had felt such a profound defeat in the war that he had not wanted to return here. During the war, more than anything, he had wanted to be heroic. But he was no hero. He had felt nothing but bitter disappointment that he didn’t get to complete his bombing missions against Nazi Germany. And what happened later, as he skulked through France, was best forgotten, he had thought.

  Marshall was a widower. His wife, Loretta, had died suddenly two years before, and the loss still seemed unbelievable, but now he began to feel his grief lift, like the morning fog disappearing above a waiting airport.

  2.

  DAZED BY HIS BRIEF VISIT TO T
HE MUDDY FIELD IN BELGIUM, Marshall spent the last hours before his flight home walking around Paris. It was a mellow spring day.

  He had always enjoyed this city. He bid for Paris flights several times each year, and when he became senior enough, he got them. Climb out of JFK in the evening, fly above the invisible Atlantic during the hours of darkness, and arrive in Paris under a bright sun.

  He thought tenderly of Loretta, who had always refused to believe he was anything less than heroic. He wished she could have been with him on this trip.

  He watched children on skates zooming alongside the Luxembourg Gardens, near the crew hotel. He thought about the boy in Belgium who had helped him, and he thought about the boy’s father—shot for convoying a gunner from the Dirty Lily.

  On his layovers, Marshall had rarely gone to museums or tourist attractions, but he enjoyed the bustle and anonymity of a city that still had a feeling of intimacy—unlike New York. Or London. He liked being able to understand conversations he overheard. After the war, he had taken courses in French, and over the years he had become fluent enough to get along. He liked to read novels in French.

  By the time he reached the Louvre, he realized that during his walk he hadn’t been seeing Paris as it was now, 1980. He had been resurrecting 1944. Ghostly images overlaid the scene before him. At the Tuileries, his gaze followed the magnificent view through the gardens and on up the Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. Over this sight now he superimposed his memories of being there long ago, when there were hardly any vehicles. He saw images from newsreels and photographs: Hitler’s hordes marching in perfect lockstep; later, Churchill and de Gaulle triumphant.

  To Marshall’s right, somewhere along the rue de Rivoli, was a Métro stop. He and a brash bombardier named Delancey had stumbled up from the Métro, scared, towering like Lombardy poplars among the crowd of much shorter Frenchmen. If they missed their contact, they would be stranded—lost amidst the Germans, circulating around them in their menacing gray-green uniforms.

  She was there. He saw her first, sitting on a bench reading a timetable. There was a quietness to the crowd, as if people were on their best behavior. Marshall had doubted that a mere schoolgirl would be sent as their contact, but there she was, sitting with a book satchel and earnestly consulting a timetable.