Dinard must have been a beautiful place in peacetime. It was a seashore resort. From where we set up our defense, we could see from a high bluff down into the waters of the bay, and we marvelled at the beautiful, sparkling, inviting sea. Most of the houses were handsome, many extremely modern and well placed to make the most of the magnificent view. Dinard was not completely destroyed like other towns we had seen in France, though some of the buildings were still burning and the local fire department rushed around in an old truck trying to put out all the blazes at once. In spite of ourselves, we had to laugh at the Frenchmen going about the task. It was like an old Keystone Kops comedy. The amount of chattery, screams, and gestures that apparently went with putting out a fire would have quenched all the flames easily had words been water.
Since we had no definite idea where the remaining enemy were in Dinard, we set up our guns at a street intersection so we could fire in any direction. What had once been a rifle platoon of 40 men and an officer—now reduced to but 12 men—joined our positions. Just as we got preparations under way, word came that we would have a hot meal, our first in many days. I sent a patrol to the company command post (CP) to pick up the food.
I was looking around for a place to locate myself when the crack of a rifle shattered the comparative silence we had been enjoying. The shot came from a patrol leader crouched behind a brick wall which ran around a stucco house.
“What’s up, Sergeant?” I asked, dropping down at his side.
“Snipers in that house. Lieutenant.”
“I didn’t hear anybody fire at you,” I said.
“They didn’t have a chance. I saw the shutter move and I fired first. Look! There’s another one of the bastards!”
Glancing toward the house, I saw one of the big iron shutters move slowly. When someone fired, the movement ceased, but the same suspicious movement started again on the bottom floor. A shot from the sergeant put a stop to that one.
“Looks like the place is crawling with them,” I observed, “and our chow’s getting cold.”
Spreading out around the house until we had surrounded it, I bellowed in English for the occupants to come out with hands up. When this produced nobody, I tried again in my special version of German. Someone else tried in French. It was not long before all of us were yelling encouraging or threatening remarks in some language. But none produced a response.
Because of the long, unprotected run from the wall to the house, I hesitated to assault.
“But our chow’s getting cold, Lieutenant,” one of the men complained.
“Okay,” I replied. “And it’s getting dark. We can’t leave them there tonight or we’ll never get any rest. Who’s got a rifle grenade?”
The sergeant produced a grenade, the infantry’s tiny, portable artillery, and fitted it to the end of his rifle. I told him to fire at the front door. As soon as the grenade exploded, we would rush the door.
The explosion was deafening. As a cloud of smoke and dust rose from the house, we charged through a gate in the wall. We drew no fire as we dashed across the open space to gain the protection of the side of the house. Inching forward, we made it to the front door. Inside I could hear sounds of movement, and in the dim, dusty light I made out two figures. I pounced into the room and collared them.
“Come on, you sonsofbitches,” I yelled. “Get the hell out of here!”
To my astonishment, they weren’t Germans at all. The big, strong Paul Boesch, professional wrestler and fearless soldier had collared two old French women!
For a few minutes, confusion was king. The old women wept and screamed, all the while keeping up a verbal barrage that would have done credit to a machine gun. We couldn’t under-stand a word they were saying—the fact is, I doubt they were making much sense in their own language. When one of the women began waving papers under my nose, I took them and looked them over. They were identification papers required by the Germans. These women thought we were Jerries!
By gently taking one of the women by the shoulders, I managed to shut her up for a moment.
“Nix Boches,” I said slowly and deliberately. “Nix Boches. Americains! Americains!”
For a split second, silence—but before I could sigh with relief, the torrent of weeping and screaming began again; only this time in a different vein. They fell on my neck and hugged and kissed me, all the while shouting hysterically, “Americains! Americains!”
I felt embarrassed and confused and wanted to get away, but one of the women kept shouting something about “Madame” and pulling me farther into the room. I finally gave up and followed her through shattered plaster and broken crockery across the room and into a hall. There we came across another woman, this one older than the other two, bent at the waist and supported by a cane. All three chattered briefly, then dragged me toward the stairs and half-pulled, half-prodded me up the steps.
I felt distinctly foolish.
“Better keep your weapons ready,” I said to the men behind me, however unconvincingly, “you never can tell where the hell this will lead to.”
At the head of the stairs, my antiquated guides turned to the right and burst through a door into a bedroom. There in a large, daintily draped bed lay another old woman. Hers was the pale face of someone who has been confined indoors for a long time.
One of those who had led me upstairs rushed to the bedside and in an uncontrolled flow of words told what had happened. The patient, who obviously was the “Madame” referred to downstairs, shot question after question back. None of us could under-stand the questions or the answers, and I doubt if either of the women got much from the exchange, for neither appeared to listen to the other.
Disgusted and perplexed, I plumped my weary body into a frilly chair near the bed and dug out my French phrase book in search of some means of telling these people to stay away from windows, act in the open and not surreptitiously, and let us leave after suitable apologies for the damage we had wrought. But all the phrase book told me was, “What is the price of tomatoes?” or “Can you direct me to the railway station, please?”
In utter desperation, I said to myself in a harassed voice, half plea, half prayer:
“For the love of Pete, can’t anybody around here speak American?”
My words miraculously produced a delightfully soothing silence. All the old ladies looked at me as if I had shot off another rifle grenade.
“Why, I do!” exclaimed the lady on the bed. “I’m a Yankee. I was born in Brooklyn.”
For a while none of us could speak. We hardly could have anticipated finding an American in that house, least of all one from Brooklyn. Of eight men in the room, at last six were from Brooklyn. They crowded around the little old lady’s bed.
In a few minutes we determined that the woman’s name was Blanche Vallois, but before her marriage to a Frenchman after the first world war, her name had been Stebbins. She had been living in France since her marriage and, as far as she knew, was the only American to stay in Dinard during our attack. The Germans had given the population a chance to leave the city, which most people had done, but plucky Madame Vallois would not go. During the entire period of German occupation she had not once stepped into the street lest she meet a German. Proudly and confidently she had waited in her home for the day when her native countrymen would come, but I am sure she never anticipated that her countrymen would burst in so noisily and unceremoniously.
In spite of our attack on Madame Vallois’ home, she remained unruffled, gracious and charming to us all. She had come from an old American family, as evidenced by photographs covering her bedroom walls. Some showed her and her father with President McKinley.
When I explained that she and her companions had better behave in a less mysterious manner in the future, she waved a finger at me severely.
“Just what did you do, young man,” she demanded, “to my dining room?”
When she saw the look on my face, a twinkle came to her eyes, and I knew that Madame Vallois was indeed a gracious lady.
Taking reluctant leave of Madame Vallois, we found that our chow had arrived in our absence, but now it was cold and unappetizing. The night was as dark as the inside of a boot and we were tired, much too tired to care about anything. I lay down under a big tree and promptly fell asleep.
The next morning I examined a nearby house and found it to be a stately structure which must have been a show place when properly maintained. It was uninhabited; rumor had it that the owners were pro-Nazi and had left town some weeks before. Though some windows were broken, a few big ones with an un-rivalled view of the bay remained intact. There was no water and no electricity, but we hardly noticed these deficiencies in our delight with soft chairs and sofas. We bounced around from one to another.
Wandering upstairs to the bathroom, I looked into a mirror and gasped.
Staring back at me was a horrible apparition that bore no more than a faint resemblance to the real me. Though conscious that I had neither shaved nor washed for more than ten days, I was quite unprepared for the result of such cumulative neglect. My beard was twice as thick and twice as black as I had thought it must be. For the first time I realized why some of the Jerry prisoners had stared at me with such obvious concern. Looking in the mirror, I wondered why I bothered to carry a carbine—I could have scared the Germans to death.
Jack arrived to see me just as I was about to start. As I scraped the beard from my face with a borrowed razor, he watched in open-mouthed amazement. I also got a few helmets full of water and managed a bath that made me feel clean even though I had to put the same dirty clothes on again.
Having improved my appearance, I took Jack over to see Madame Vallois. She hardly recognized me with my bare face hanging out, but a few words brought back the experience of the previous day. We brought her some butter, sugar, and soap from the company kitchens, for we figured she deserved some of the things she had been missing for so many years in return for her loyalty to her homeland.
Jack and I discussed many things with the grand old lady as we sat there in her home that afternoon. Despite intermittent shelling that was still going on within the city, it was like taking a vacation from the war. We learned that part of Madame Vallois’ family still lived in the States and that her sister had been visiting her when the war broke out and had been forced to remain in France after the Germans came. When the attack started, her sister had elected to go stay with friends in the country.
Knowing that Madame Vallois’ resources probably were limited, Jack and I offered her some of the money we were carrying around somewhat superfluously in our wallets, but she was as independent as she was gracious, and refused to accept. But we could do her one favor. She had been unable to write to the States since the war began and unable to receive dividends from her investments in America. As a civilian, it still might be some time before she could establish contact with her family and her bank, so I wrote to them through military channels. Months later I was to receive an appreciative letter from her nephew, but by that time I had left Dinard and Madame Vallois far behind in all but my thoughts.
After our visit, I went with Jack to his CP located in a badly-damaged building in which everything seemed half demolished except a piano. Jack already had treated his men to a few tunes. Now, as shells fell outside, he agreed to another concert in ray honor.
From Jack’s CP I went to my own company headquarters, there to be shocked at the complete cessation of discipline that had set in. Wine was flowing freely. Empty bottles littered the floor.
I searched out my company commander to perform an unpleasant duty. I had to prefer court martial charges against Jim, my platoon sergeant, and the private who had deserted with him. Both men were hanging around the CP, enjoying the liquid fruits of victory. Their brazen attitudes infuriated me. The private had even become involved in a shooting scrape, details of which still were obscured in drunken and argumentative testimony. He wasn’t very brave when it came to facing the enemy, but he wanted to shoot his friends the minute he got a few drinks under his belt.
The Captain was full of wine too and was feeling maudlin about those of his men who had been killed. He pleaded with me not to start anything.
“They had a tough time before we got here, Boesch,” the Captain droned, none too convincingly. “I’ll bust both of them and get them transferred to another outfit. What’s the use killing any more men?”
I was hardly anxious to have either of the men shot—no man likes to make a decision like that—but I had to do something that would show the rest of my men there was no reward in letting their buddies down. Even though I knew that the court martial penalty for desertion in the face of the enemy was “to be put to death by musketry,” I also knew I had to act.
“When will you do it?” I asked. “It’s been almost two weeks now. That Jim is still wearing his stripes and walking around here like he’s a hero. A little more of that and we’ll have the whole company hanging around the CP the minute a little shooting starts,”
“Don’t worry, Boesch,” the Captain coaxed, “I’ve been busy too, you know. I’ll make sure it’s done before the day is out. And if any more guys get the idea they can goof off, I’ll show them who’s boss of this outfit. Is it a deal? We bust ‘em and send ‘em someplace else.”
He put an arm around my shoulder and breathed wine-laden breath in my face.
Disgustedly, I accepted. It was not without a sense of some relief that I gave in, but I have always questioned whether or not I did the right thing by taking the easy way out. Certainly the many men who died in action on the way to Dinard would have preferred reduction in grade and transfer to another company to a cold soldier’s grave. Perhaps if I had been more experienced at the time, I might have insisted on court martial. Then again, after all I saw later, would I have been more mellowed perhaps, more understanding?
Returning to my mansion, I checked on the men of my platoon and then set about my favorite work; for the first time in almost two weeks, I sat down to write a letter home. Now that the fighting was over, I knew what to say. Though I recognized that it was useless to try to conceal from Eleonore the fact that I had seen combat, I felt now that this particular phase was over I would not have to tell her anything that would worry her unnecessarily. My experience with Madame Vallois pointed the way, for it was easy to tell that story. As I wrote, I poured out my heart with the realization that a long period of anxiety would be ended when Eleonore got my letter. At the same time I yearned for mail of my own. Now that the tension of the fighting had eased, I began to feel terrible pangs of homesickness and loneliness which for the next few days would almost get me down. I longed for the sight of Eleonore, to feel her arms warm about me, to tell her I was well and safe.