The War Bride
LILY JACOBSEN
Odile
The U.S. Army did not know what to do with me.
Or with Marceline or Lucienne or Huguette.
Since the autumn, requests for permission to marry mademoiselles had cluttered commanding officers’ desks.
Some days, it seemed there were as many fiancées as soldiers, and as many awkward conversations.
“You barely know the woman!” “You’re shipping off tomorrow!
” “You’ll forget her! She’ll forget you!
” Nothing doing. The men wanted their brides with them in America.
Naturally, wounded soldiers like Buck got sent home quickly, first-class mail.
But the army thought it wouldn’t hurt us ladies to sit in a depot in Normandy, sent parcel post if our paperwork came through.
While we were waiting at Camp Lucky Strike, Red Cross volunteers taught us to sew quilts.
As we pieced patches of material together, we spoke of our darlings, of the country we would call home.
“What’s a ‘sharecropper’?” Huguette asked. “My husband said it was his métier before the war, but I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t understand.”
“It’s like Gone with the Wind.”
Finally, our ship came in, though we had to pay a hefty price for a one-way ticket.
“A sergeant’s salary doesn’t go far,” Buck had warned.
I cupped his cheeks in my hands. “I’ve worked since before the war,” I told him.
“Between the two of us, there will be enough.” In a few months’ time, Uncle Sam would gallantly start paying for war brides’ passages, but I couldn’t have waited.
During the voyage, we women shared photos of our husbands.
One was bald as a billiard ball, stout as a beer stein, and we wondered, What did she see in him?
This was the problem with pictures, they only showed so much.
At night, while we swayed in our bunk beds, each woman’s story of how she met her husband—black and white as a photo—poured out.
Marceline said: It was love at first sight. But his commander kept losing our marriage application. He didn’t want us to marry because Seth is Black. So we asked my village priest.
Chantal said: In London, the Red Cross organized a dance for GIs. The matrons only let in the “right” kind of girls. They said I weren’t good enough and wouldn’t let me through the door. When my Luke saw how mean they were, he let them have it, I can tell you! He gave me his arm and escorted me in.
Lucienne said: Michael parachuted into my yard. My family hid him in the cellar.
Huguette said: My mother begged me to give it time. I told her we don’t have time. We’re at war.
I said: Buck and I met on Saturday, and the army chaplain married us on Friday.
They said: How romantic!
Just a kilometer from New York, we stood at the railing.
On the horizon, we spied a regal compatriot waiting to greet us.
Lady Liberty stood in the fog, torch raised to guide us to our new home.
A reminder that our journey was nearly over, but that another would begin.
A new day with a new husband. In a daze, I watched reuniting couples clutch each other at the harbor.
When a corporal didn’t come to collect his bride, she sat on her trunk and cried.
I held her hand, comforting her as I could, while a cross Red Cross worker said, “You were asking for trouble when you married a complete stranger…”
On the train to Chicago, while Chantal, Marceline, Andrée, Huguette, and Lucienne chatted—“What a big country!” “What if his parents don’t like me?
”—I stared out the window as the immensity of what I’d done rolled by.
To escape my husband, I’d left Paris without a goodbye.
I would never again see Maman and Papa, would never again return to the American Library in Paris.
What must my friends and colleagues all think?
Though I was convinced leaving was the right decision, it was painful to look back.
The train slowed for Andrée’s stop. She cried and laughed and embraced us.
In the carriage, we gave her gifts from our handbags: a lipstick to match her one good blouse, a fountain pen to write us letters, a rabbit’s paw to stroke when she got nervous.
One by one, my companions alighted, leaving me with Lucienne, whose husband came to claim her on the platform of Chicago’s Union Station.
When Michael drew her into his arms, the passionate embrace reminded me of the ones I’d shared with Paul.
No, I wouldn’t think of him. I was married to Buck now.
I recalled our wedding in the army tent, a makeshift chapel.
Right before the ceremony, the chaplain had asked me to swear on the Bible that I wasn’t already married.
He’d heard about us easy, bigamous French gals.
Rémy never would lie to a priest. You’re so good, I thought to myself, to my twin.
That doesn’t make you bad, Rémy replied. It’s all right to move on.
Buck’s head shot back. “Of course she’s not married.”
Unconvinced, the chaplain thrust the Bible at me. “Do you swear on your honor?”
What honor? With my left hand, I reached out to Buck, who enlaced his fingers with mine. I raised my other hand. “I swear I’ll be a good wife.”
Buck rubbed my bare finger. “I’m sorry I don’t have a ring.”
I recalled how I’d hurled the plain gold band from my wedding with Paul into the Seine. “I don’t want one.”
Michael and Lucienne saw me to my train, the Empire Builder. She told him I was traveling on to Buck’s hometown, Froid, which means “cold.” Turning to me, she said, “French! It’s a good omen.”
Alone in the compartment, I was lulled by the miles.
The grass turned to yellow brush, trees became long stretches of snow-covered prairie, each station one closer to Buck.
We would have a cottage with a little garden.
A raspberry patch would grow near the fence.
His mother would teach me how to make jam.
When the train slowed to a standstill in Wolf Point, I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. My skin was sallow, but my chignon was perfect, not a brittle hair out of place. Gripping my vanity case, I stuck my head out the door into the cold. Buck hurried over to help me alight.
“There’s my little gal.” The words came out of his mouth, little puffs of mist. He kissed me and held me tight. I melted into his warmth. It had been six long months.
“We’d better get going,” he said, gently disentangling himself.
Now that he wasn’t in the military, his buzz cut had grown out.
I couldn’t stop sliding my hand through his hair, relieved to touch his face, his neck, to see the crinkles around his smiling eyes.
Seeing his relaxed appearance, even in this biting wind, I realized how pale and tense he’d been in Paris.
Perhaps after a few months here, I would look as happy.
Noticing me shiver, he placed his coat over my shoulders.
“Is it blustery like this all the time?”
Buck grinned. “If we’re not careful, the wind’ll blow us into North Dakota.”
Everything gleamed, the rails, his pink cheeks, the chrome of his truck.
He took my suitcase from the porter and slung it in the back of the “rig.” On the highway, I looked out over fallow fields and could see for miles in each direction.
Buck had been right about the sky, bigger and bluer than in Paris, and not a single cloud.
He reached over and squeezed my knee. I placed my hand on his.
Today was a new beginning. We’d have our own home.
For our first meal, I’d make potato-leek soup, and why not a roast?
The road stretched in front of us, and I could taste the possibilities.
We drove through Froid, a village dotted with charming little homes, in less than five minutes.
There were three bars and one church, but no bookshops or bakeries.
Buck parked in front of a two-story white wooden house on the edge of town.
It had large windows but no shutters. There was no fence, no barrier to keep out strangers, not like in Paris, where we valued our privacy.
“Come meet my parents.”
They came onto the porch as Buck opened my door.
His father was a smaller, older version of Buck, his hair gray, his face lined with more worries.
His mother wore a lavender skirt and blouse, primly buttoned to the collarbone.
In my war-worn skirt and cardigan, I felt self-conscious.
In Occupied France, we women tried to go on as before, but over four years, our clothing became threadbare.
Yes, some Parisiennes received new dresses from their German lovers, but most of us did with what we had, mending holes and fixing frayed hems. Our shabby clothes became badges of honor.
However, here in Froid, upon observing Mrs. Gustafson’s ensemble, I was certain that it was not chic to be shabby.
“Ma, Pop, this is the woman I was telling you about, my little gal, Odile,” Buck said proudly and pulled me to his side.
“Hello, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, enunciating clearly, like the Countess.
“A deal?” his father said.
“Ordeal,” his mother corrected.
Were they doing it on purpose? I studied their faces. Mr. and Mrs. Gustafson seemed genuinely perplexed. It hadn’t occurred to me that they did not know.
“Oh-deal, and I got hitched in France,” Buck said.
They remained on the porch. His father looked at me warily. His mother’s vague smile became a bitter pucker. “You keep telling us that,” she said. “But how can you be married if we weren’t there?”
“What about Jenny?” his father said. “Everyone thought you two had an understanding.”
“She’s like a daughter to us,” Mrs. Gustafson said. “While you were… away, we spent the holidays together.”
Buck had a fiancée? I stepped away from him.
“How could you do this to Jenny?” Mr. Gustafson said. “She’s waited for years.”
“No one asked her to,” Buck replied.