Chuck wrote regularly from England a couple of times a week. There were long delays getting his squadron combat-ready and he was frustrated. But after three months or so, he began seeing action. I had one letter in which he said they had finally flown over the Channel on a routine sweep to get combat experience, but then his letters stopped. I had no word from him for many weeks. Then one day his mother called to tell me they had been notified by the War Department that he was missing in action. She was a religious woman and said she was praying as hard as she knew how that he would be all right. She called me because Chuck had written to her saying that I was the girl he planned to marry. He had never told me that. The fact that the telegram said he was missing, not killed, was at least something to cling to. After that, I called her every week, eager to hear news, trying to bolster her spirits and mine. But I didn't have much hope. I figured Chuck was gone.
The old man leads the way through the deepest, darkest part of the woods. German patrols are all around us, hunting for me. Several times we think we hear distant voices and scramble to hide in the brush. But soon we are circling a clearing, staying in the shadows of the pines, and I see a two-story stone farmhouse. The old man nudges me, bends low, and runs across the open field toward the house. I follow him, expecting to hear rifle shots any moment. I forget my wounded leg and move. He leads me to the back of the house and I follow him into a barn, and up a ladder to the hayloft. He opens a door to a small room used to store tools and pitchforks, and pushes me in. Then he shuts the door, locks it, and begins pitching hay against my hiding place. I'm drenched in sweat. The small room is almost airless and pitch dark with barely room for me to sit. I'm trapped in this damned place and begin to wonder whether or not I've been trapped by the old guy: made a prisoner while he runs to get the Germans and maybe pick up a cash reward. I argue with myself about that lousy possibility, but not for long: there are German voices in that barn, and I hear them climbing the ladder to the hayloft.
My automatic is out, my finger on the trigger. The sounds are muffled but definite: they're rummaging in the hay, maybe stabbing into it with bayonets like in a war movie. I don't know how long I sweat it out, but straining to hear, I hear nothing. I never hear them leave-if they have. Maybe they are just sitting out there, having a smoke, and playing a nasty game with me.
They come for me several hours later. I hear the sounds of hay being moved; by then, the .45 feels like it weighs fifty pounds and it takes both of my aching hands to hold it. Before he opens the door, the old man wisely whispers: "It's me. You're okay. They're gone.
When he unlocks the door, I don't know whether to hug him or shoot him. I've no idea what's going on. We move quickly from the barn into the farmhouse, and I'm amazed to see it is already dusk. He leads me up a flight of wooden stairs to the second floor, and we enter a bedroom where a woman is sitting up in bed, wrapped in a shawl and surrounded by medicine bottles. She's about fifty-five, with keen, intelligent eyes, and when she sees me, she begins to chuckle. "Why, you're just a boy," she exclaims. "My God, has America run out of men already?" I tell her most pilots are young and that I'm twenty-one. She speaks perfect English and begins to question me-my name and background. I shake my head when she asks me if I'm married, and her eyes narrow. "What about that?" she asks, pointing to my high-school ring, which I wear on my right hand, where Europeans wear wedding rings. I explain and she seems satisfied. "We must be very careful," she says. "The Nazis are using English-speaking infiltrators to pose as downed American fliers."
She's satisfied that I'm not a German, although my West Virginia accent puzzles her. "Our people will help you," she says, "but you must do exactly what you are told." If the Germans catch us, I would be sent to a prison camp, but they would be pushed against the stone wall of the farmhouse and shot on the spot. I'm taken down to the kitchen where a young girl feeds me soup, bread, and cheese, my first meal in more than twenty-four hours I wolf it down. Later that night the village doctor climbs the ladder to the hayloft and I'm let out of my dark little cell long enough for him to pick the shrapnel from my hands and feet. The shrapnel puncture in my lower calf is not very deep. When he's done, the doc makes a little speech in French, probably saying, "Hey, kid, your wounds are the least of your problems."
I stay in the tiny store room in the hayloft for nearly a week, although each day I spend more time outside than in. The Germans have seemed to lose interest in finding me; there are fewer patrols now. Maybe they're hoping that if they stop looking so hard, I'll become careless and fall into their net. And it nearly happens that way. One sunny morning, I climb down the ladder and venture out of the barn only to dive for cover when a Focke-Wulf comes roaring over the treetops.
It's a pretty farm, and I feel homesick. Late one night the doctor returns, hands me civilian clothes, and tells me to put them on. "We take a little journey," he says. We set out on bikes; I have an ax strapped to my back like any other French woodcutter. We travel for hours in the dark on empty country roads. I have forged identity papers and if stopped by a German patrol, I'm to let the doctor do the talking. We travel together for two days, biking most of the night, resting in various farmhouses during the day, until finally we reach the village of Nerac, a few miles from a more famous town named for its cheese, Roquefort. It's dark when we enter a farmhouse. The farmer's name is Gabriel, a huge guy with a thick, black mustache. The doc says good-bye, and Gabriel takes me out back to a shed that will be my home for the next few weeks. If my kids ever ask how I spent the war, I'll have to tell them the truth: hiding in closets and sheds. Gabriel has a wife and a young son, and from time to time, I'm allowed to sneak into the house and share their family meal.
"We loove Americains," his wife tells me. I think she learned that piece of English just for me.
Gabriel's farm is right on a main road. As the days drag, I begin to get restless and bored-and a little careless. One day, fed up with my shed, I sit under a sycamore tree in the front yard, and before I can get up or get away, a troop ot German soldiers marches around the bend. They pass not ten feet from where I'm sitting under that tree. Gabriel sees this and nearly dies from fright. He says the French equivalent of 'God almighty, fella, what in hell are you doing?" In English, he says, "Stay in hide. Otherwise, me and you." He scrapes a finger across his throat. I nod and apologize. His young son likes to play ball and sometimes we kick the ball to one another behind the shed. But mostly I just stay in hiding, wonder what's happening to my squadron, write letters to Glennis in my head, and sleep a lot.
One night, well after dark, I leave by foot with Gabriel as my guide. We move deep into the pine forests, and after two days of mostly steep uphill climbing, Gabriel tells me to wait while he goes on alone. I wait for him most of a day and begin to wonder whether I've been deserted. But when he finally returns, he's with a group of heavily-armed men wearing black berets and bandoliers of rifle cartridges strapped across their chests. I don't have to be told who these guys are. These are the Maquis, the French resistance fighters who live and hide in these mountain pine forests by day and blow up trains and bridges by night.