The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [83]
“Oh, no. He was only a convoyeur for the pilots,” she said. “The Bourgogne line strictly limited itself to helping the aviateurs. Robert’s parents were grocers, and they were forced to supply the Germans, but Robert was able to get food from them to help us feed the aviateurs.”
“His daughter should know this,” Marshall said.
“It was very risky, but we depended on him. He probably was your escort on the train.”
“My memories are vague, but yes, I think he led me south from Paris. He seemed so mysterious, like he was involved in major operations.”
“There was no mystery about Robert. He was too much not mysterious, truly. I always trembled for him. He was often in danger.”
“Tell me about him.”
Hesitating, she offered him another piece of chocolate instead. Marshall was afraid he was asking for too much information, but then she began, slowly.
“At first, he made the false ID papers for the aviateurs. We fed the evaders and hid them for a short while, and then he escorted them on the train to Perpignan, where they would cross the Pyrenees with a local guide. But one day Robert arrived at our door, desperate and anxious. He had been arrested on his return from Perpignan. The French police on the train became suspicious of his papers.”
“Did he carry a fake ID for himself?” Marshall asked.
“Oh, yes. As you know, all young French men—age twenty to twenty-four—were sent off to the work camps in Germany. He was about twenty-one, but he contrived to look older.
“That day he arrived to us, badly shaken.
“ ‘Hide me,’ he said. ‘I was arrested!’
“ ‘But how did you escape?’ asked Maman.
“ ‘I jumped from the train down the embankment. But no one shot at me. I took two different trains until at last I arrived here.’
“The French police had kept his papers. He was disturbed, but he hadn’t lost his courage. He thought the police had let him go in spite of their suspicions. That happened sometimes, even with the Germans. Once he and my father were escorting aviateurs from Belgium, and he noticed that the German police seemed to recognize that there were aviateurs with them. But then the Germans looked the other way! Maybe it was too much trouble to arrest them. Or maybe it was only that they were looking forward to their beer and sausage. Still, it was all very dangerous.
“After Robert’s misadventure, the chief of the Bourgogne stopped him from going to Perpignan. He instructed Robert to bring the identity-card equipment to our apartment, and my mother began to make the false papers, as she did when you were there. Then I began guiding aviateurs to the photomaton at the Louvre to get the photos for the false identities.
“That is when I began going with Robert to escort aviateurs coming down from the north. We would meet them at the Gare du Nord and guide them to their shelter family, then later we put them on the train at the Gare d’Austerlitz for their southern journey. I went on Friday afternoons, after school.”
Marshall said, “When I was trying to find you, I started thinking how amazing it was that a young girl would be out on such a dangerous mission.”
She laughed. “Oh, there were many occasions that could have been the end! Once, we were with a group of five aviateurs at the Gare du Nord, when we passed five others at the stairs to the street! We recognized they were Americans by their large boots and, of course, their height. We didn’t dare acknowledge them, and our group had been instructed not to notice anyone, not to respond or react. What a job! The aviateurs did not always take it seriously, and the Americans were likely to produce their chewing gum—mon Dieu! Or ask for a fire for a cigarette. Oh, they weren’t stupid, but we had to teach them not to smoke in public! You remember that.”
“A Yank is a Yank,” he said, laughing. “It’s hard for us to wise up.”
“The Germans did not always pay attention. I think they were just happy to be in Paris. They thought they had already won the war. The French police were more likely to notice the large boots. When Robert and I went north