CHAPTER TWENTY
Bastille Day—1944
THAT night, lights glowed in the Gagnon house. In spite of the blustery cold wind and drifts of rain, the door stood open most of the evening.
Friends came, laughing, crying, chattering greetings and news. Children came to ask André questions and stand with open mouths at what he had to say.
Marie brought cups of hot chocolate and black bread. Mme. Lescot supplied some small cakes.
Leon Duplis rode over to tell Marie that General de Gaulle, who commanded the Maquis from London, was now touring the liberated towns of Normandy.
“The French Army will soon join the fight to free our country,” Leon whispered to Marie. “They will enter France from the Mediterranean. But do not tell anyone yet I said so.” And with that he was on his motor bike and gone.
On the road outside, traffic was coming up from the beach, but in smaller convoys. “The sea is getting very rough,” someone reported.
By midnight all the guests had gone and the whole family were in bed—really home at last.
André went out to the road many times the next few days to look for friends on the army trucks and jeeps rolling by. On the third day, a messenger from St. Sauveur, on his way to the supply dumps on the beach, stopped to talk.
“We got the peninsula cut off now,” he reported. “The 9th Division an’ the 79th an’ the 4th Division are on their way to Cherbourg. Goin’ fast, too.”
Captain Dobie’s men were still fighting for the marshes and some hills west and south of St. Sauveur, he said.
The storm over the Channel had built up to an alarming degree. Rain and wind whipped the trees along the coast and drove the villagers indoors. Traffic past the house slowed almost to a stop.
When André asked a truck driver what was happening on the beaches, the driver said, “A blasted hurricane. The sea is standin’ on end. No landin’ barges can get ashore. Pretty bad, ’cause General Bradley’s howlin’ for ammunition.”
Frenchmen coming to the village from the shore said tons of supplies had been swept away and sunk.
The storm raged for four days, and André went sadly about his duties watching the road now nearly empty of trucks.
Two days after the storm subsided, André heard that General Eisenhower had ferried across the Channel to look over the destruction.
“He’ll talk to them army engineers an’ get deliveries speeded up—or else,” a soldier said.
But the Americans were driving hard to capture Cherbourg. They needed the port more than ever since the storm had stopped supplies coming across the beaches.
On June 28th, Leon came, and shouted through the door, “André! Marie! Cherbourg has fallen. Normandy belongs to us again!”
Then, on D-day plus 29—four weeks after the 82nd paratroopers had first drifted down into the Gagnon orchard—Slim clattered up in a jeep.
André saw him from the hallway and raced out to grab his hand and pump it up and down—as the soldiers did. He asked, “Where are Captain Dobie and Sergeant Weller? Has the 82nd been relieved? Did you win your battle?”
“What you mean, mister?” Slim growled. “Did we win our battle? The 82nd always wins its battles—Africa, Sicily, Normandy. You know that.”
André took Slim into the house to see the rest of the family. He translated Slim’s “American” as well as he could for his father and mother.
“This is my last errand this way,” Slim told them. “I’m on my way to the Utah airstrip to fix the cap’n’s passage home.”
Before he left, he promised to bring Weller and the captain to see them on the way to the plane.
The storm had at last blown itself out, and traffic on the road was again heavy. Now the Allies were getting ready to break through to Paris—to free the rest of France. The British and Canadians were fighting hard around Caen. The Germans were bringing up more and more tanks—better in some ways than the British and American ones—and the battle was rough. But the Invasion armies were moving toward the breakout into the farther parts of France. The spirit of Liberty swept slowly but excitedly across all Normandy.
July 14th, Bastille Day, which was the symbol of French Liberty, would soon be here.
“This year we will celebrate Bastille Day with good heart,” said M. Blanc to Father Duprey.
And Father Duprey, who was very practical, asked, “How?”
“Ah, that I have thought about,” M. Blanc answered. “And I have a plan for our little village. Alone, we cannot do justice to such a great event as this Liberation. We will join with Ste. Mère Église to celebrate. We are not without talent in this village.” He looked mysterious and whispered his plans to the priest, so that no one could overhear.
When they had finished their discussion, Father Duprey said, “Your plan will also keep the children out of the fields till the German land mines have been cleared up.”
The following few days there was a great hubbub in the loft of the Gagnon barn. Children’s voices rang out. And music billowed over the rooftops.
Early one morning, Father Duprey summoned André. Victor appeared with his cart, and with the priest and André jogged off, behaving mysteriously, to talk to the mayor of Ste. Mère Église.
Bastille Day, Friday, July 14th, was the next day. By sunrise that morning all the little villages near Ste. Mère were alive with activity.
Mothers bustled breakfast into their families and packed up lunch baskets. Older sisters swept the family’s best clothes, all nicely aired, over the heads of the younger children. Then mothers and big sisters pulled and twisted themselves into their own gayest Normandy dresses. Fathers put on the dark suits they had been married in.
And all over the peninsula the French tricolor flags, which had been hidden away, flew in great flapping bursts of triumph from every house.
All churchbells that had survived the bombing began to ring soon after the sun was up.
In the Gagnon house, Maman was scurrying about, her own silk dress rustling as excitedly as she was. Marie, too, rustled in her new pale-yellow parachute gown.
Old cars had been rolled out of sheds where they had been hidden, and somehow brought to life. They began to ease into the busy military traffic and headed for Ste. Mère. Carts, bright with flags and flowers, and loaded with chattering villagers, thronged the roads.
Father Duprey and M. Blanc had gone to Ste. Mère still earlier in a borrowed car.
In good time, Victor, Mme. Lescot, and their daughter showed up at the Gagnon door with La Fumée. The fat Percheron whinnied when André led the family out to jam themselves into the cart.
When La Fumée entered the outskirts of Ste. Mère the town was already aflame with a noisy celebration.
Victor found a spot where La Fumée could be hitched to a post with a pail of water beside her.
In the heart of Ste. Mère Église the square was a churning mass of people. But in a cleared space in the center of the green, officials and police were arranging things in an orderly way. There was a flag-draped table on a raised platform, and rows of chairs for special personages stood in a square.
At one side of the table, dignitaries were gathering. At the other side, M. Blanc and the Ste. Mère music master were herding the children who were to sing, into neat rows.
Running to join the children, André saw uniformed French officers in a group among the dignitaries. All eyes were upon them. Farther back stood a company of about a hundred American soldiers.
Marie went to join Leon, Jacquard, and the other Maquis who had been able to come.
When the hour for opening the ceremonies arrived, Father Duprey and two other priests moved to the table for prayers of thanksgiving.
Then the mayor of Ste. Mère, and the mayors of other villages made speeches. These over, the music master blew his pitch pipe and M. Blanc raised his arm to give the beat for the singing. High and clear, the children’s voices sang out the beloved old songs of triumphant France.
When the last song died away the children settled down on the grass, and M. Blanc rose.
“We are now about to have a special pleasure,” he announced. “André Gagnon will express the feeling of comradeship we all have for our friends, the Americans.”
André had been carefully carrying his trumpet under his arm. His knees shaking, he stepped forward and put the trumpet to his lips.
He played first a gay little Normandy tune. This was loudly applauded and he waited for the noise to die down.
When he again trilled out a trumpet call, every Frenchman present grew silent and listened with puzzled eyes. The tune was one they didn’t know.
Suddenly, from the back of the crowd, men’s voices began to sing the words.
André’s heart gave a great leap. But he kept on playing. The voices were growing louder. The men were moving toward the green.
André swept into the chorus, and powerfully the American words, punctuated by clapping hands at the proper time, swelled out over the crowd.
A French voice took up the words. Another and another, until the entire gathering was singing.
Many of the Americans stood beside André now, and Slim, his hard hands beating the clap-clap of the chorus, sang the loudest.
“Deep in ze ’eart ohff Tayxsas,” sang the French.
sang Slim and Weller and Captain Dobie, dragging out the last long notes at the thought of home.
André dropped his trumpet to his side.
As the babble of happy voices rose and became bedlam, Captain Dobie shook hands with the French officers.
André started at the sight of a Royal Air Force uniform and ran across the square.
Standing beside Marie, Ronald Pitt was laughing with the Maquis over the escapade of the strange “nun.”
Ronald grabbed André’s arms and swung him merrily around.
“How did you get here, Ronald?” André asked.
“Well,” Ronald replied, “I’m on my way to the British lines to chauffeur a general around—”
“Oh-ohh,” André giggled.
“I saw this celebration going on down here,” Ronald Pitt went on, “and I wanted to see what was happening in Ste. Mère. So I landed in a field and trotted over—and look what I found!”
Slim and Weller joined them then.
“Didn’t we tell you we’d come?” demanded Weller.
Softly, a song began to tremble from different points among the crowd.
André lifted his trumpet and began to play.
And swelling mightily over the battered roofs of Ste. Mère rolled out the song of freedom that is the voice of France—the “Marseillaise.”
Everyone sang and many wept.
After that, the gathering broke up and lunch baskets were opened. Mme. Gagnon beckoned her enlarged family party together under the shade of a wide chestnut tree. Lunch was spread out. Between them, she and Mme. Lescot had brought food enough for all.
Captain Dobie and André sat side by side.
“You will return to visit us after the war?” André asked shyly.
“I certainly will,” promised the captain. “I shall come back whenever I can. I won’t be comfortable unless I know what you’re up to.”
André laughed. “And,” he said, “I shall go to America some day to see that you have got that leg mended.”
“Vive les Americains!” shouted Raoul, who had mysteriously become one of the group.
“Vive la French!” shouted Weller.
La Fumée heard them, and put her muzzle down comfortably into the water pail.