To Kingdom Come (29 page)

In French, he told him the numbers were 349, the correct numbers. Marcel smiled and told Warren that after dark he would come back and escort them to his home in Torvilliers.

When he returned later that night, he brought along simple peasant clothing for them to wear on the walk back to Marcel’s village. Inside the shuttered café, Madame Vergeot used scissors to trim the dead skin from Warren’s hands and fingers before coating them with a greasy mixture of tannic acid, paste, and kerosene to prevent infection.

Marcel told them that hundreds of American airmen had parachuted into France the previous day, and that the underground was temporarily overwhelmed by the challenge of finding safe houses for all of them.

The following night the two Americans were taken to a small farm in La Rivière-de-Corps. It was owned by a middle-aged man named Leon Nelle, and his farm would be their home for several nights while long-term arrangements were being made for them.

Monsieur Nelle was a patriot, but quite eccentric. Each night before retiring, he would put on his be-medaled World War I uniform coat and sing “La Marseillaise” at the top of his prodigious lungs. It seemed odd behavior for a man who was housing two escapees and presumably trying to avoid notice.

Assisting Allied fliers wasn’t Monsieur Nelle’s only occupation. The second night after their arrival, a heavily armed man arrived at the farm in the early hours of the morning. He conversed with Monsieur Nelle in fluent French before turning to address Warren in English.

The man explained in an English accent that he was an operative of the British SOE (Special Operations Executive), which supported the French underground with weapons, explosives, and logistical support, while undertaking sabotage missions against German installations.

After getting Warren’s and Joe’s names and serial numbers, he said he would radio his controllers in England to report that the fliers were alive and well. It wasn’t until later that Warren realized the agent was also looking to confirm that they were genuine.

They stayed at the farm for five days. On September 12, Monsieur Nelle told Warren that the underground had found a safer place for them to stay. That night they were taken on foot to a charcuterie in the village of Sainte-Savine, which sat on the main road to Troyes. The owner, Joachim LeDantec, lived on the second floor above the shop with his wife and daughter. Warren and Joe would share the attic.

Once they settled in, the days passed slowly. Warren spent his waking hours studying his French-English dictionary, and then practicing phrases with Madame LeDantec and her daughter, Anne Marie. He hoped that becoming fluent would enhance their chances of escape.

For his part, the perpetually hungry Joe Schwartzkopf was tormented by the aromatic smells of sausage, cheese, and roasting meat emanating upward from the shop below.

On September 20, Warren celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday. It was no different from any other day, although he found himself constantly thinking about his fiancée, Libby. He hoped she was weathering the news of his having gone missing with the same spirit and pluck she had demonstrated during their courtship.

It had not started well. After one of their first dates, Libby wasn’t sure he was the one for her. “He’s not my type,” she confided to her diary. But his earnest sincerity had slowly won her over, and when she agreed to marry him, he took the next step in the old-fashioned way.

“I’ve got to go and ask your father,” he had said.

Libby’s father was a building contractor, and at that time he was constructing a new four-story house near Danbury. He was on the roof when the couple arrived at the building site.

“Mr. Minck, I’d like to talk to you,” Warren shouted up to him.

“Can’t you tell me from down there?” her father had called out to them, not wanting to descend all the way down the sets of ladders.

“I want to marry your daughter,” Warren shouted up to the roof.

Mr. Minck came straight down the ladders.

“I think you should wait,” he told Warren as soon as he was on the ground. Libby’s parents were strict Catholics. Warren was Protestant. The Mincks had deep reservations about mixing religions.

Libby spoke right up to him. “When he comes back from the war, Dad, we’re going to get married.”

Sitting in the safe house, Warren only wished he could let her know he was safe.

One afternoon, he was studying French in the upstairs parlor when he heard the noise of a heavy vehicle rumbling slowly past the house in the street below. Glancing outside, he saw a huge truck and trailer filling the road that ran east through the village.

Strapped to the bed of the trailer was a wrecked airplane. From its shape and size, Warren knew it was a B-17. When he saw the painting of the half-naked girl on the fuselage, he knew it was
Patricia
. The Fortress was being hauled back to Germany to be melted down for new German weapons.

The sight of their destroyed plane brought home the loss of Ted Wilken and the rest of the crew like a fresh stab to the heart. When Warren asked Monsieur LeDantec what had happened to the dead crewmen, the Frenchman told him that Ted and the others had been temporarily buried near the crash site. Simple wooden crosses now marked their resting place. In the days since the plane had gone down, villagers had covered their graves with fresh flowers.

Eclipse

Sunday, 26 September 1943
Chicago, Illinois
Braxton “Betsy” Wilken

S
ince the birth of her daughter, Kathy, a month earlier, she had been staying at her mother’s elegant ten-room apartment on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive. On September 9, Braxton was enjoying the stunning view of Lake Michigan when the doorman called up to say that a Western Union messenger was in the lobby to deliver a telegram.

Braxton had received another telegram from Ted just three days earlier. Dated September 6, 1943, it read, “CHECKING ON DAVE . . . WILL WRITE BETTY ... LOVE TED.”

The handful of words reflected everything that was fine and generous about Ted as a man. Dave was a fellow B-17 pilot in England. Ted had met him during bomber training and they had become good friends. Dave was married to Betty, who along with Braxton had trailed after their husbands from one installation to the next before the two pilots were deployed to the Eighth Air Force in England.

Dave’s Fortress had not returned from a recent combat mission, and he had been reported missing in action. Ted’s telegram meant that he wanted Braxton to let the distraught Betty know he would do his best to try to find out if Dave had survived before he wrote to her.

This latest telegram wasn’t from Ted. It was from the War Department.

I REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT THE COMMANDING GENERAL EUROPE AREA REPORTS YOUR HUSBAND SECOND LIEUTENANT RAY T. WILKEN MISSING IN ACTION SINCE SIX SEPTEMBER. IF FURTHER DETAILS OR OTHER INFORMATION OF HIS STATUS ARE RECEIVED YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED.

ULIO THE ADJUTANT GENERAL

First Dave and now Ted, both in the same week. She was devastated.

Braxton knew that Ted would want her to remain strong, both for herself and their new baby. On their last night together before he went overseas, he had spoken to her about the possibility he wouldn’t come back. He knew the odds of surviving twenty-five missions in the summer of 1943.

She had already gone through the emotional agony of their parting in Spokane, Washington, after Ted left with his crew in their new B-17. She was pregnant with Kathy, and Braxton’s stepfather had arranged a berth for her on the Northern Pacific to come back east.

Over the course of the two-day journey, she had cried without respite, leaving her sleeping berth only to go to the bathroom. It was as if she was enduring the grief of his loss without even knowing his ultimate fate. By the time she reached Chicago, Braxton was emotionally spent. She slowly recovered at her mother’s home.

After hearing the news that Ted was missing, Braxton’s stepfather was spurred to action. Chester “Red” McKittrick was the chief financial officer of the
Chicago Tribune
and the right-hand man of the aging newspaper baron Colonel Robert McCormick.

Red had plenty of friends in Washington and the Pentagon, and he now called on them to find out if Ted might have survived. As the days passed, none of his contacts came back with solid information. The family could only wait.

On September 18, Braxton received a v-mail letter from Gene Cordes, the original bombardier on Ted’s crew, who had been too ill on the morning of September 6 to go on the Stuttgart mission.

Gene was suffering from survivor’s guilt, suggesting in his letter that the outcome might have somehow been different if he had been with the rest of them. He wrote that he had talked with many of the crewmen who had survived the mission to try to find out what had happened to
Patricia
. No one was certain, but one of them reported that he had seen parachutes from a Fortress that he thought was Ted’s going down short of Paris.

Gene was sure Ted was still alive. It was impossible for him to accept that Ted wouldn’t have made it. He urged her not to give up hope that he was in France and being sheltered by the French underground.

Whatever his fate, Braxton vowed that she would neither wallow in misery nor allow herself to become an object of pity. Their love was a private matter. It was between her and Ted. She would not share her grief with anyone else. He would want it that way.

For now, all she felt was a growing numbness.

Greek Holiday

Thursday, 14 October 1943
Paris, France
Second Lieutenant Demetrios Karnezis

“Y
our time has come,” said Monsieur Maraceaux.

Since arriving at his benefactor’s home in mid-September, the Greek had spent a month hiding on the top floor with P-47 pilot Warren Graff and B-17 gunner Frank Kimotek. The days and nights had passed uneventfully, but the Americans were anxious to leave.

The French escape routes were still badly clogged. Most of the men who had successfully made contact with the underground on September 6 had been sent on to Paris, where most of the escape lines were concentrated.

A recent series of arrests by the Gestapo of suspected Allied sympathizers had led to a number of confessions. Some underground members had been shot. Others had been sent to concentration camps in Germany.

Monsieur Maraceaux had become increasingly worried that his own underground cell had been compromised, putting both him and his family at peril of arrest and execution. The sooner the Americans could leave Paris, the sooner the pressure on him would be relieved.

In the weeks he had lived with the Maraceauxes, the Greek had come to admire the almost casual bravery of this man, his wife, and their only son, Jacques, a well-mannered teenager who had shown a great curiosity about America. The boy had studied English and hoped to visit the old west someday. He peppered the Americans with questions about famous American explorers.

The tedium of the Greek’s stay had been relieved by a single visitor. On the afternoon he celebrated his twenty-second birthday, there was a knock on the door of his room. When he answered it, Marie Therese, Marcelle Andre’s seventeen-year-old daughter, was standing in the hallway. She had come all the way from Champigny.

“Joyeux anniversaire,
Jimmy!” she said, smiling up at him.

The Greek had told her that his family nickname was Jimmy. She pronounced it somewhat breathlessly with a softened “J.” Along with fond greetings from Marcelle and Suzanne Bouchy, she had brought a birthday cake made with eggs and butter. It was obvious to the Greek’s housemates that the French girl had lost her heart to him.

On the night of October 16, Monsieur Maraceaux came upstairs to tell them that they would be leaving Paris the next morning on a train going to Brittany. Their ultimate destination was the port of Brest in westernmost France. From there, the three Americans would be smuggled in a boat along with other escapees to England.

The Greek’s forged identity papers identified him as a Breton fisherman. In fashioning his disguise, Monsieur Maraceaux had urged him to look as disreputable as possible. The Greek had allowed his beard to grow and had dribbled gravy stains all over his shirt and rumpled black suit.

At dawn the next morning, a member of the underground arrived to escort the three Americans to the train station. When the Greek said his final good-byes, he promised to come back at the end of the war and thank the Maraceauxes personally for their courage and generosity.

The Greek was aboard the train to Brittany when the Gestapo came for the Maraceauxes. The Frenchman denied that he had harbored Allied fliers. After thoroughly searching his house, they found sufficient evidence to arrest him along with his wife and son.

It took almost twelve hours for the train to reach its destination. It not only stopped in many of the towns but would sometimes come to a halt in the middle of a forest for fear of being strafed by Allied fighters.

Another member of the underground escape line met them on the platform in Brittany. He introduced himself as Raoul and led the Americans to a local village church. The floor of the church loft was covered with a layer of straw. It would be their resting place overnight.

The next morning they left to board another train for Brest, which was home to one of the largest U-boat bases in France. The train was packed with German U-boat crews returning from leave.

To preserve his good luck, the Greek reached inside his suit coat to rub his St. Demetrios icon. It was missing, and he realized it must have fallen out into the straw the previous night. He said a silent prayer to his patron saint.

Security was very tight at the Brest railway station. Every passenger had to go through a checkpoint manned by German soldiers. They would randomly stop travelers and request to see their papers. Perhaps St. Demetrios was looking over him, or maybe he looked disreputable enough to be a Breton fisherman. He was allowed to pass without incident.