Explore the Biarritz and the American University: Explore Biarritz, a posh seaside destination for 19th-century royalty, and learn about the “American University” established there for GIs waiting to return home. Discover how this initiative became a precursor to the GI Bill.
CHAPTER 26
WHERE HAVE WE MET?
Kathy had deliberately disobeyed orders. Only when she was safely out of Reims did she allow herself to think of possible consequences. She had, in fact, deserted her post. At each station she half expected an MP to board the train and pull her off. Upon arriving in Paris, she predicted an entire platoon of MPs would be waiting. Surprisingly, no one questioned her orders to Biarritz.
That evening in Paris, she slept in the still-unheated leave center. Early in the morning she went to the Gare d’Austerlitz, the large rail station in southeastern Paris.
On the platform, among the crowds of soldiers, was one girl in a nurse’s uniform. She was listening to and laughing with two Captains. One was telling a story, interrupting himself with his own laughter. The girl was tall, large-boned and square-jawed. She looked about Kathy’s age, though with her brown hair brushed softly back into a bun, she looked more matronly.
The girl seemed delicate beside the huge talking Captain. He towered over her, broad and muscular, a handy man for carrying footlockers and bedrolls in this station without porters. The other Captain, shorter, leaner, stood quietly beside them, listening. Kathy estimated his broad shoulders would be just the right height for her to lean her head on. But then, she had no intentions of leaning on any man again.
Kathy approached them. She waited for the Captain to finish his story before introducing herself to the nurse. She wanted to travel with another girl if she could. She saw, on closer look at her insignia, that the girl wore the caduceus of a dietitian. The Captain stopped talking when he saw Kathy, and looked embarrassed. The lean Captain had a stern, tight and controlled look between his eyebrows.
Kathy spoke to them, “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just wanted to ask if this is where we take the Biarritz train, and to say hello to another dietitian.”
The girl shouted, “Glad to see you!” She put a muscular arm around Kathy in a welcoming hug. “Yes. We’re waiting for the Biarritz train, here. Are you going to the Biarritz University?”
“Yes,” Kathy replied.
“Ride with us, please. I’m Frieda Norton.” She kept her arm across Kathy’s shoulder as she introduced the men. “This is Mike Mulligan. Mike is the Army version of an Irish policeman,” as she nodded to the husky man. Then as she nodded to the leaner man, “and Jim Duncan. We’ve all just arrived from England.”
“How do you do. I’m Kathy Collens.”
Frieda put her other arm around big Mike. “Go on, Mike. Finish your story.”
Mike said, “Naw. There’s a lady present.”
Frieda said to Kathy, “You don’t mind a good story, do you?” Pointing out Kathy’s two overseas stripes to Mike, she said, “She’s been in the Army long enough to be one of the boys. Go on.”
Mike hunched his shoulders. Since he was obviously reluctant to finish his evidently off-color story, Kathy rescued him. “I am in the Army, but I am not one of the boys,” she smiled gratefully at Mike. “I consider it a compliment that you don’t want to finish your story in front of me.”
“Aw, come off it,” drawled Frieda. “No swearing? No four-letter Anglo-Saxon words? You tell the boys, ‘Speak pretty!?’”
“No, I don’t say anything to stop them. Yet only once have I ever heard foul language. Once a cook didn’t know I had returned to the mess, and I overheard him. He was so embarrassed that he apologized. Then he followed me into my office and apologized again.”
Captain Jim was looking at her with curiosity. Well, let him think she was prissy. Kathy pondered this situation. Seems there was something about her that compelled some men to watch their language. Yet something else about her that encouraged them to proposition her. She understood neither.
Jim had tilted his head to one side, and was looking at her with friendly gray eyes. The thinking lines between his eyes deepened. “This isn’t just an old line,” he said. “Where have I met you before?” He smiled like a little boy wanting to be understood. “You look familiar.”
“That is an old line.” Kathy looked at his face, the fine, straight nose, the deeply cleft chin. Certainly, an interesting face, one to be remembered. There was something, perhaps. “Were you a patient in Suippes or Mourmelon?”
“No.” Jim wore Air Corps insignia. “I’ve been in England the last three years. Been there?”
“No, I’ve spent this last year in France.”
“My home was Hastings-on-Hudson in New York. Ever lived there?”
“No, my home was in Illinois.” She wanted now to have known him before, to find something in common, to have a friend in this world of strangers.
Jim asked, “I studied chemistry at Pratt Institute at New York University night school. Were you…?”
“No, sorry.”
“I was studying at Iowa State when the war began.”
“Yes,” Kathy said. “Yes. I was at Iowa State too! Were you in a play, or on the yearbook staff? Or at a fraternity exchange?”
“No. I worked my way through school. I had neither time nor money for fraternities or plays. You might have seen me in a chemistry lab. I assisted there.”
Jim was interrupted by the roaring arrival of the train. “How about your luggage?” he shouted.
“Right there.” She pointed to it piled on the platform.
“We’ll load it for you.” Mike easily swung her footlocker into the baggage compartment. Jim as easily lifted her bedroll and the other luggage.
“Thank you. You’re so strong,” Kathy told them both admiringly.
“You know what that means, don’t you,” Jim said to Mike. “She’s talking us into carrying footlockers from now on.”
“You’re sweet to offer,” Kathy laughed. “I could never manage by myself.”
Frieda snorted, “By yourself, my eye! You’ve got the whole Army to carry things for you!”
“That’s all right,” said Kathy. “I have a working arrangement with the Army. I can’t carry footlockers, and the Army can’t cook. So, we help each other out.”
“OK. We expect dinner from you first thing at Biarritz,” said Jim. “Now let’s get on the train. I don’t like last minute rushes.”
Frieda climbed independently up the train steps. Mike followed. Jim, standing behind Kathy, put his hand under her elbow. She jerked her elbow free. She didn’t want any pilot pawing her, and then wondered if he just might be simply helping her up the first high train step. Mike reached down to her with a helping hand, and she accepted. Frieda could be one of the boys if she wanted. Kathy found it more fun to be a girl—or did she?
Two double seats faced each other in the compartment, and these four would cozily fill it. The train started slowly, giving last-minute passengers time to jump on. While they rode through the dreary industrial sections of Paris, they unharnessed their musette bags and took off their overcoats. In general, military personnel wore the latest fashion in uniforms, the new waist-length Eisenhower blouses.
“Your blouse looks British,” said Frieda to Jim.
“It is. I traded with a Royal Air Force Major. I like the British weaves, rougher, more rugged.” He took off his jacket to pass around for the girls to inspect. His shoulders did not come off with his jacket but remained amazingly broad, giving him, with his slender hips, a movie star physique.
Mike tossed part of the bags and coats onto the baggage rack. Jim reached up to rearrange them in compact order, to make room for all. The sight of his muscles moving under the shirt that stretched tight across his lean back, not padded with a layer of fat, appealed to her dietitian’s heart. She rejected the impulse to offer him a K-Ration. Too bad a man with such interesting muscles was a pilot. Pilots were as able to aggressively love ‘em and leave ‘em as were the paratroopers.
Kathy returned his blouse, which he tossed upon the baggage rack. She said, “You’re overestimating the heating system on French trains. I love the French, but they don’t know how to get this compartment warm.”
“This is warm, compared with the damp chill of England.” Jim sat by the window in his shirt sleeves. “My Scottish blood scorns a jacket when the sun is shining.” And sure enough, the sun was shining. The sky was blue, and in the suburbs south of Paris, the grass was green.
Mike settled beside Jim, on the seat facing the girls. “You are dietitians. Where do we eat lunch?”
“You never know till you see it,” answered Kathy.
“Sometimes the train stops to take on water for the engine while we passengers eat in transient messes. Or it might not. If not, I have a musette bag full of K-rations, and a canteen of water. I might give you the dinner you earned before we reach Biarritz.”
Jim took a stick of wood and a jack knife from his pocket. “What’s in a K-Ration?”
“You’ve never had one? And you have been in the Army how long?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I had.”
“That Air Corps! While the poor infantry slept in the mud and ate K-rations, you Air Corps had fresh oranges and steaks. You even lived in heated buildings.”
Jim nodded an agreeable grin. “With a batman, to light the fire and serve hot tea before we even got out of bed. With riotously drunk nights in London where girls swarmed Piccadilly Square, eager to please American pilots. I’ll not judge men who’ve been flying a fighter plane through enemy ack-ack, hour after hour in the cockpit, returning with pants wet from fear.” He opened his knife, and cautiously tested the edge with his thumb.
Thank you for taking the time to read this excerpt from Chapter 26. I hope you enjoyed the unfolding interactions and the vivid descriptions of Kathy’s journey. Your interest and support mean a lot to me, and I’m excited to continue sharing the story with you.
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