The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [36]
He replayed his mission, instant by instant. He didn’t want to forget it, but neither did he want to relive its most terrible moments. He was heartsick; he didn’t know the fate of the crew. They had lost the plane.
He had been in England kissing Nurse Begley, and suddenly here he was in a claustrophobic hidey-hole, waiting, waiting, in a house of strangers jabbering gibberish, women in shapeless black garments plodding through their days worrying with food, fragments of food, roots from a cellar. He was a helpless pipsqueak. When he went down to empty his chamber pot one morning, he saw the girls’ mother come in from the garden with a green leaf. She waved it in his face and chattered excitedly.
France didn’t seem as cold as New Jersey, from what he could gauge by the quality of the unheated air, the chill in the house.
He heard voices downstairs during the night, and footsteps ascending the stairs. “Monsieur, monsieur, des Américains! Américains! Aviateurs!”
He opened the door and there stood two men—disheveled, large, haggard, sleepy-looking.
“Des aviateurs!” one of the women in black—the tallest—said. She was carrying a small candle.
“We were shot down,” the taller one said sheepishly.
“You suis américain too?” Marshall asked, startled.
“Yeah boy!” said the other. “I’ve been on the run, like a wild pig rooting around in the woods. Four days. Then I met some friendly guys who took me to a farmhouse and I got grub, and next thing you know I met Pete and they brought us both here.”
“Pete Drummond, 403rd,” the tall one said. “Waist gunner. Our Fort got hit on the way back from Frankfurt, and I bailed out. Let me tell you, that was some ride.”
The woman left, and for a time the flyers filled the room with their stories. Marshall was glad to hear English. Probably one of these flyers was from the Fort he had heard flying low a few days earlier. The guys gabbed until another of the women climbed up to their hideaway.
“Chut!” she said, entering the room with a tray. “Hush.”
She had brought them each a cup of ale and some pieces of bread.
“Man, this cock-sucker French bread is liable to tear out all my fillings,” said Pete.
The other flyer, Nelson Avery, a tail gunner from the 305th, gnawed his bread steadily. “Excuse me, I’m still starving.” He licked the crumbs from his hand. “I don’t know what happened to our plane, our crew. I got out, but it was on fire and I reckon they’re all goners.”
He spoke as if he were talking about a distant event that did not concern himself. His emotions hadn’t registered yet, Marshall thought. Nor had his own. He didn’t know where he was or what he was supposed to feel. It was some small comfort to have two more flyers there with a language in common, but they also intruded on what had been his private garret.
“Where’s your flight suit?” he asked Pete, who was dressed like a laborer.
“I robbed a scarecrow.”
The pants were filthy and ragged, too short, and the sleeves of the jacket rode up his arms, exposing his GI wristwatch.
Marshall joked, “Next time, I’m going to pack a sandwich and a French peasant outfit.”
“Always be prepared, huh?” said Nelson. “Well, the Boy Scouts don’t teach you how to bail out of a blazing bomber.”
“I got the piss knocked out of me when I landed,” Pete said. “When you hit the silk there are two big spurts. First, you’re out the door, WHOOM! Then WHAM! The chute opens. Then you’re falling, like your ears have gone deaf. Or you’re in heaven. Then WHAM-BAM! You hit the ground.”
“It’s so peaceful till you hit,” Nelson said.
Hearing about their flakked and burning bombers and their heavenly parachute descents intrigued Marshall. He almost envied them. They could just float down to the ground, and then they were on their own. They didn’t have to see their crewmates lying dead. He shivered. The Dirty Lily slammed into the ground again.
“What do you think comes next?” Nelson asked Marshall. “Is the Underground going to get us out?”
“You never know who might be friendly or not,” said Pete. “I tried to ask a man on