Gone to Soldiers: A Novel by Marge Piercy
“Much.”
“How did he die? Did they shoot him? How?”
“He took that poison capsule I presume you too have handy in your tooth.”
I thought he was going to break my arm in his reaction. Then he looked me in the eyes, his own grey as river ice. There is something in him I do not like, cold and hard, but just then we understood each other. “Goddamn him. He must have talked about me, about Zach.”
“He talked about his sister, whom he loved. He talked about his father, whom he did not love.” I saw I was going to have to lie to him. “And of course he talked with affection of you, of Zach.”
“He never felt real affection for anybody in the world. He was lovable, wasn’t he, our Jeff? He permitted himself to be loved but that was it. Even that bored him fast enough, didn’t it?”
I didn’t answer because frankly that seemed nonsense. This man is cold, not Jeff. We were all better friends to him, and that was why he wanted to stay with us. Finally I thought of something I could say. “He loved this landscape, especially around Lacaune. He planned to settle here after the war.”
“If I’d been here, I could have covered his ass. He wasn’t following procedures, obviously. He was taking suicidal chances.”
“They only caught us because they had tailed one of his agents and were waiting for us to appear at the drop site.”
His eyes were cold and still. “But they let you go.”
“I escaped.” I turned away. Suddenly I was sick of his suspicions and his ego. He seized my arm again. I said, “Let go of me. If you don’t let go, I will defend myself.”
“Don’t imagine you could,” he said, sneering at me, but as if doing me a great favor, he dropped my arm. I went into Dalia’s tent immediately, where I did not think he would bother me.
When I was sure he had left, I went to the tent Daniela and I share. As I did so, a Messerschmitt came over, the second today. The men fired at it, but it simply rose a bit and circled back. I hoped Daniela would be here so I could talk to her about the arrogant American, but she was with our wounded. I’ll go help, but I decided to make an entry in my journal to calm myself. I find myself furious and roiled up. I am sorry I lied to please him. Jeff did mention a rich friend of his who tried to control him, and I am sure this is that master manipulator in the cold flesh.
He speaks French correctly but his accent is hideous and—Some kind of explosion, finish later.
Thus ends the journal found by Lev Abel.
From Le Journal de Marche, Sergeant Lev Abel, leader, 1st platoon, 4th squadron, Montagne Noire Corps Franc:
On 20 juillet 1944, 10:30, we were attacked by a large German force. This force we later estimated to consist of five Panther tanks, four antitank guns, 1500 foot soldiers of four divisions, various artillery and armored vehicles, with air support. After the strafing runs by six Messerschmitts, a runner reported that a German column was advancing from the Arfons road.
In the initial bombing our commander was killed. Lieutenant Martin Lévy-Monot, known as Lapin, took command and led a group to a barricade, ordering the rest of us not to hold the peak but to infiltrate the German lines and regroup at a rallying point at Agoudet, 70 km distant. He would try to hold up the advance long enough to secure evacuation of the wounded and the retreat and regrouping of our badly outgunned forces. We had no antitank guns, no artillery, nothing with which we could stop armor. He took twenty-two men armed with grenades, machine guns, Sten guns and rifles.
I have found only one survivor of this force. By their heroism, they delayed the German advance long enough for many of our troops to get away, but we lost unknown numbers because of German barriers on the roads around Albine and Fontbruno. We cannot yet estimate our losses. We may never know what happened to some of our people in the scattered retreat.…
30 juillet 1944
Morale is low, but I am attempting to bring our forces together at the rallying point. We have been cut off from communication with London, but today a radioman turned up with the American major who calls himself La Mangouste. He can get us more weapons, he says, but we must be ready to use them. I have begun intensive retraining. He says an Allied landing in the south is imminent, and we must whip our troops into shape to attack the Germans. I tell him if they do not give us antitank weapons, we are carrying out no frontal assaults. He says that harassing and sabotage are fine.
Every day a few more men trickle in, but we are not going to collect everybody in the same place this time, as we did on Montagne Noire.
8 août 1944
Today, we had a message as we listened to the BBC that another invasion is coming, this one in the south. La Mangouste confirms that this is true. We have seven days before 15 août when the invasion is scheduled. “This time they gave us more warning,” I said to La Mangouste.
“They trust you more and they need you. You don’t understand how long it’s taken for those of us who understand shadow warfare to get the importance of the Resistance through the thick skulls of the regular military. If there’s anything they hate, it’s civilians with guns.”
Our men are low in morale after the massacre on Montagne Noire and the loss of so many good people including Lapin, Dalia, our nurse, Eduardo and Gingembre, but we will whip them back into fighting shape. La Mangouste knows his weapons and he gives the men spirit. I said to him, “They are good soldiers, and only ask not to be forced to fight twentieth-century armor with nineteenth-century hand weapons.”
“I have requested mortars for you, as I’m sure Vendôme did. But they aren’t sending heavy weapons to the Resistance.”
“There’s a limit to how far they trust us, eh? Jews, exiles from Spain, escaped Russian prisoners, Communists, peasants.”
La Mangouste agreed quite openly. “But also remember, what we send to you we take from the regular military, and they’re fighting now in Normandy, in Brittany, in Italy and coming soon a big invasion here. Try to take weapons from a general sometime. I expect they’ll want us to deal with the Wehrmacht in Castres, Mazamet and Carcassonne. From what your boys tell me, we can expect them to try to move out on Routes 112, 113 and 118. Not to forget railroads and bridges. We shall be as busy as ants at a picnic before long, so cheer up. Don’t worry about the weapons lost on Black Mountain, because we’re getting a fresh load.”
The eleven-thirty broadcast had instructions for the drop, as La Mangouste had predicted, and also a list of targets. We are back in action.
BERNICE 8
Of the One and the Many
It was in Long Beach itself that the hostility toward WASPs that had been building in the newspapers and in the population came home to Bernice and to Flo, when men began yelling at them on the street. Bernice knew that they had been called all kinds of names and subjected to innuendo in the papers, glamour seekers, loafers, shirkers, women who just wanted to chase after pilots. Jacqueline Cochran had worked with Congress on a bill to militarize them, so that they would have the same benefits as other noncombat personnel, but the bill had run into extremely heavy opposition from the American Legion, from the civilian male flight instructors who were no longer needed and from the civil aviation community.
The first time Bernice and Flo were surrounded by a group of hostile men jostling them and calling them bitch and floozy and whore was at the base itself, where many of the civilian flight instructors from the flying schools that had lost contracts were trying to qualify as ferry pilots. Many of them failed the tests, and they hated the WASPs. From being invisible, they had passed to being far too visible. In Congress speeches were made about how they were spoiled women who were stealing the bread out of the mouths of men who needed jobs.
Congress was conservative, a product of the off-election of 1942 when rigid voting laws had prevented both the troops and the workers who had moved for defense jobs from registering. The Civil Service Committee said that there were already too many trained pilots who would be competing for scarce jobs as soon as peace came, when the De
Bernice drew in. She felt most comfortable sticking to her own in the barracks. She stopped going to the bar pilots patronized. The pressure of the work did not lessen, for there were more and more planes to deliver. Around the Long Beach ferrying squadron, Douglas, Lockheed, North American and Vultee were belching out planes. Far away in a war of words they were forbidden to take part in, even to the extent of writing their congressmen, their fate was being decided. Bernice felt powerless—she who had felt enormously empowered.
Nevertheless at the controls of a fighter, she knew her skill, her competence, and she tasted the zest of flying fast and well. That remained to her, that and the company of other WASPs, especially Flo.
Flo had occasional flings, but they were not romantic, and perhaps understanding that gradually about each other drew them together. Bernice did not look to Zach for love or support. If she never went to bed with him again, she would be the same person, although with him she had discovered rooms in herself that would likely have remained shut up. She did not imagine there were many men who would turn to stare after her as a figure radiating sexuality. Men seldom seemed attracted to her, excluding drunks in bars or wolves who’d chase anything still breathing.
Flo had been in love and retained that burned air of somebody who has put everything into a man and lost. As she told Bernice, for her to wish to be in love would be like wishing to catch diphtheria again—which she had had as a young girl. It was wishing to be sick almost to death.
They were drinking in the barracks, now that they felt the atmosphere in the CAVU bar (pilot’s jargon for ceiling and visibility unlimited) potentially stormy. Around the base, some kind of liquor could always be purchased. Sometimes they got ice from the mess and sometimes they didn’t bother, in spite of the heat. They had a fan turned straight on them, to stir the turgid air. “Why should you feel grateful to this Zach?” Flo asked her, sprawled on her own cot.
“Because he taught me to fly. He gave me that chance. Because he gave me my body too in a new way. Because he doesn’t make me put on dolly clothes for him and simper.”
“Jesus, I think if I had to deal with anybody making up to me the greasy way that women have to do with men, I’d puke.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Bernice grinned at her. “Wouldn’t it make you feel kind of important to have somebody fussing like that? The more fool she makes of herself, the more of a king you are.”
“Do you reckon you’ll marry him after all this is over?”
“Flo, don’t think I’m some kind of an idiot. Rich guys don’t marry women like us. He’s got someone in mind, he told me. I think he wanted to see if I’d kick up a fuss.”
“Did you holler and cry?”
“What for? I wouldn’t like living with him, let alone running a house the way he’d want it. A house? An estate. I daydream of having a little shack somewhere it’s not built up yet, near an airport.”
“Desert’s better for pilots than mountains. Every time I fly East, I look down on all that empty country. Should be room enough for a couple of battered fly-girls. You ever think about that? Running our own little service maybe. Getting a mail route for a stretch of wild country. Giving flying lessons.”
“Ever since they wouldn’t let us deliver the planes out of Romulus across Canada to Alaska, I’ve wanted to go north all the way.… You want to go up to Alaska and take a look, after the war?”
“I was thinking of desert, but it sure ought to be wide open up there. They say everything is done by dogsled or by planes. That if you call a doctor, he comes by plane.”
Bernice sat up, reaching for the bottle. They had been talking each to the ceiling, but now she looked directly at Flo. “Will we promise that? Make a pact? That as soon as we can, once this war is over, we’ll go to Alaska and give it a look. If we don’t like it, we can work our way back here and try the desert.”
Flo sat up too and faced her, knee to knee on their cots. “How do we seal a promise like that?”
Bernice realized they were both a little drunk. With the bottle between them they had helped themselves to twice what they would have in the bar. It was hot and they both felt thirsty and thus the level had slid down. “When I was a kid, my brother and I signed an oath in blood, but it flaked off when it was dry.”
“We could swear on a Bible, if we had a Bible.”
“Emma has a Bible, but I don’t believe in it. I’m an agnostic.”
“That’s a kind of Protestant too, isn’t it? I was brought up Pentecostal myself. But I don’t believe anymore. I believed in hell long after I stopped believing in heaven. It seemed like the nasty kind of joke the bastard who designed women’s bodies so you’re always pregnant or on the rag for forty years would think up, you follow?”
“I believe this is it: this is the only life and the only chance we get. What we don’t do is our own fault.”
“What do I believe in?” Flo screwed up her face, considering. “I believe in my body, because if I bump on it, it hurts. I guess I believe in what hurts, because it makes you know it’s there.”
“If you believe in pain, you have to believe in pleasure too. You have to believe in what makes you feel good and strong and alive.”
Big tears began to run out of Flo’s eyes. She sat there shaking while tears ran over her cheeks and along the shallow grooves beside her mouth.
“Flo, what’s wrong?” Bernice moved to sit beside her, putting her arm around Flo’s shoulder.
“I don’t know!” Flo moaned. “It was just what you said made me cry. I don’t know nothing that makes me feel good and strong except flying and sometimes being with you, just talking and feeling like we’re really friends. Ever since you picked me out when we were instrument flying, I’ve felt like you have more respect for me than anybody else ever did. Not that there’s been a long list.”
“I do care about you. You’re my best friend.”
“You mean that?” Flo stopped crying.
“Why wouldn’t I? My brother used to be my best friend, but it wasn’t ever equal. I was stuck taking care of our father, while he was painting and having adventures and love affairs. I envied him as much as I loved him.”
“You aren’t going back there after the war?”
“No!” Bernice said vehemently. “I wouldn’t fit in that house. I can’t be my father’s servant any longer. He has a housekeeper now anyway.”
“I can’t go home. My family told me never to come back. They consider me a fallen woman. I said, hell no, Mama, I’ve risen and she told me I was damned.”
Bernice tightened her arm around Flo’s solid shoulder. Neither of them was fat but both carried ample flesh. Flo was shorter and lighter boned, but still a good size for a woman, stocky, tough, but soft and warm too under the grip of her hand. “Why shouldn’t we make plans together, real plans? It isn’t as if we owe anybody.”
“Where would we get the money to buy a plane?”
“I own half a plane, back home. It’s just a sixty-horsepower Piper Cub, but I have half interest in it. I’ve saved my wages.”
“So have I. But we’d need a better plane.”
“We’ll get the money. Maybe Zach would lend us some. He’d act like a hard businessman and want to be persuaded we could make a go of it.”
“Two women? Who’d let us.”
“We will. We’ll let us.” Bernice hugged Flo, full of confidence, a flood of energy. She felt Flo’s warm breast pressing against her own and in that instant she froze, catching her breath and aware suddenly that Flo was also sensing her sharply. Neither of them moved. Flo turned her face slowly toward her and stared, not with horror, she saw when finally she could meet Flo’s gaze, but with some dawning question, a wild surmise of something improbable. They stared into each other’s eyes, Flo’s the pale grey of
Then Flo jumped. Bernice heard it too, the laughter of women approaching, back from their evening out. At once she bolted from Flo’s cot to her own. As she sat down, Flo reached forward and very lightly touched her knee. “We’ll do it,” Flo said. “We’ll go to Alaska and live with polar bears. That’ll be our secret.”
Bernice sat dumbly on her bed as the women rolled in laughing and singing snatches of the ribald WASP songs. Emma sat down on the foot of Flo’s bed. “Oh, you should have come with us. We saw this new Tyrone Power movie. He’s an American flier and he comes down over German-held territory where there are these Russian partisans and Hedy Lamarr is a nurse with them. And Tyrone Power, he’s shot in the shoulder, and she nurses him. So she falls in love with him. Then the Germans shoot her and she won’t betray him and we all cried. But he steals a Focke-Wulf 190 and gets away.”
Bernice could only nod feebly, jealous that Emma could make free of Flo’s cot while she had to watch herself now. It was the woman on the street in New York again, but worse. She had not been shocked when Zach told her he and Jeff had been lovers. Perhaps she thought of sex as something men owned and controlled, so it was natural they should do it with each other as well as with women. But to lust after another woman, she did not even know the name for that. Lorraine had suspected her of that in Romulus, that was why everybody had been so pleased when Zach appeared and started fucking her. It had meant to the other women that she was normal. They were wrong.
For the next weeks Flo and she went on just as before, but paying more attention to each other, watching out for each other. Bernice carefully observed all the other women. Several of them were married, their husbands in the service. Loretta lived from letter to letter. Some had fiancés overseas. One was a widow, her husband killed at Pearl Harbor. Emma’s boyfriend, a mechanic at Newark, was saving to buy her a ring. No, the other women were all thinking of men, looking for a man, engaged or married to a man, or recovering from the loss of a man. Of the single women on the base, only Flo and Bernice did not perk up when some lounging idiot whistled or when some Air Corps lieutenant on his way through made a pass. They had both opted out.