Bobbie Ann Mason - The Girl in the Blue Beret

Also by
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

NABOKOVS 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.

R ANDOM H OUSE 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, 19391945Aerial operationsFiction. 2. World
War, 19391945Underground movementsEuropeFiction.
I. Title.
PS3563.A7877G57 2011
813.54dc22 2010036861

www.atrandom.com

Jacket design: Anna Bauer
Jacket photograph: Adoc-photos/Art Resource, NY

v3.1_r1

AUTHORS 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-laws 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

MICHLE AGNIEL

AND TO THE MEMORY OF

BARNEY RAWLINGS

(19202004)

BLISS WAS IT IN THAT DAWN TO BE ALIVE,

BUT TO BE YOUNG WAS VERY HEAVEN!

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH , The Prelude

D URING 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.

Molesworth Airfield, Station 107, England

303RD BOMB GROUP, B-17G

SQUADRON 124

MISSION TO F RANKFURT , G ERMANY

January 31, 1944

1. Discuss the special bond between Allied aviators and their European helpers. Why did it take so long for many of them to reunite after the war?

2. What does flying mean to Marshall? Discuss Marshalls failed B-17 mission and the effect it had on his life.

3. Look at and discuss the images of flight throughout the novel. How does the final sentence tie in?

4. What is Marshalls feeling about the young man he remembers as Robert? Does Marshall romanticize him? Why is finding Robert so important to Marshall?

5. Love and war. There are two main love stories in this novel--the younger couple, Annette and Robert, and the mature couple, Annette and Marshall. How are these relationships different from each other? What does war do to love and romance?

6. Why is Marshall so unprepared for what Annette reveals to him? How does he deal with her story? What possibilities lie ahead for him?

7. The name Annette Vallon is inspired by a historical figure--a woman who was William Wordsworths lover during the French Revolution, and the mother of his illegitimate child. What suggestions are being made by the use of the name here? What else can you learn about Annette Vallon from further research?

8. What do you make of the epigraph, by William Wordsworth? Is it appropriate? How does it connect with the use of Annette Vallons name?

9. What do mountains mean to Marshall? Trace the importance of mountains at different stages of his life.

10. How does Marshall look back on his war experience? How does his perspective change during the course of the novel?

11. How do the experiences in the book compare with your own experiences of war? Have you ever known anyone captured during wartime?

12. What is meant by second chances?

A S 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, Luciens 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 elderlyprobably in his eighties, Marshall thoughtbut 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 Marshalls 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 Marshalls memory now. The steady, violent, rocking flight toward target. The sight of Focke-Wulf 190sangry 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.