Rescued by a huge woman

Verena1

1943: Escaped French pilot rescued by a huge German woman - his future wife. A war-time romance ' improbable, but true story. Part 1

Jean-Francois Raynal, fighter pilot, Lieutenant of Arm#e de l#air Francaise, was a man of rather short stature (no more than 165 centimetres), but even after almost three and a half years spent in various prisoner-of-war camps in Nazi Germany, his spirits were still high. In fact, he enjoyed a nickname #Raynal the Stubborn" because, during the first two years, he tried to escape not less that seven times. But after his last unsuccessful escape over a year ago, he was placed in a special section for #notorious escapists", which was basically a specially guarded camp within a camp with electric wires around, from where escape was virtually impossible. Its detainees were excluded from forced work as well as from almost every contact with other Allied POW.

Raynal battled the inevitable boredom on all sides, trying to acquire knowledge useful for his next flight, being sure that sooner or later, a possibility must occur. Most of all, he spent every minute learning spoken German from Max, his bilingual Alsatian compatriot, as well as English from his friend David from Welsh Fusileers Regiment, who also had been living in captivity for over three years and tried to escape several times.

In the early autumn of 1943, Raynal already started to feel being weakened by constant hunger, boredom and desperation of his overall situation. Once he learned from one of the guardsmen that a portion of this camp#s detainees will be directed at forced work in a chemical factory near Brux in occupied Czechoslovakia, he didn#t think twice and asked the guard to use his connections within the camp#s administration to add his name to the contingent, bribing him with his last precious Red Cross parcel. Even though some of his comrades thought him crazy ' opting voluntarily for a slave work again ' he didn#t think on anything else than on his next escape. He knew that most opportunities for escape occur during the journey and was resolute to use every slight chance. A Czech-born RAF fighter pilot drew him a sketch map of the Brux area and all of them wished him good luck.

In a short time the day of departure came. Raynal came at the Apelplatz in his worn out 1940# pilot uniform with a few belongings, gave good-bye to his longtime comrades and entered the assigned freight wagon with others. They travelled painfully slow, often standing for a full night or half a day en route, surrounded by armed guards. On fifth day in the late afternoon, they stopped again somewhere at the edge of a rather big train station inside an industrial area. That#s where they heard from inside the wagons the sounds of multiple airplane motors and than bomb blasts coming closer and closer. Apparently the very station they were at was being bombed as well, but their train was luckily spared. After some five minutes a siren called the end of an air raid and then their guards opened the wagons and ordered to get out.

The station was badly damaged, including the railway lines, and the German commander apparently decided to use the additional workforce to help his soldiers to do the necessary repairs. Raynal and other POWs were given a shovel each and told to start removing the debris. They were told that the guards are ready all around the station and they will shoot at the slightest suspicious movement.

However, few minutes after the sunset another round of U.S. bombers came, this time accompanied by some fighter planes, and started bombing again. The guards were nervous and yelled on the prisoners not to move and shovel on, but after some bombs fell close by, they themselves started losing their nerves. And when one of the fighters suddenly made a detour, flew lower and started to shoot all over the station from its machine-guns, most of the guards started running madly for cover themselves. "There will be no better chance", thought Raynal and made a run for the closest birches. All gunfire from the airplane and the remaining guards# rifles missed him and he ran on as fast as he could, avoiding birch trees and shrubbery on his way.

After a few kilometers and now in dense forest, Raynal eased and stopped. It was already dark around and no one seemed to pursue him. After a year, he considered himself a free man again, but he knew that his troubles have just only started. He was in an unknown location (although from one guards# remark to another "We are almost there" uttered shortly before the air raid occurred, he thought being already somewhere in the occupied Czechoslovak territory), with no food, at the end of September with ever colder night temperatures and only in his worn out pilot uniform that exposed his identity to every passerby from a long distance.

First few days he wandered extremely cautiously during the night only around the landscape. He found that the region was heavily populated with very little open space between towns and villages. Worse still, there were numerous big surface coal mines with steep cliffs everywhere, threatening his life. All secretly harbored hopes for a possible help from some local resistance movement vanished, as this mining region, wherever it was, seemed to be populated by ethnic Germans very loyal to the Nazi regime ' at least judging from Hakenkreuzes and Hitler#s posters behind the windows of almost every village house. Raynal moved involuntarily in circles and became weaker and weaker from starvation.

On the fifth night he decided to return to the very same railway station where he escaped and to try to hop on a freight train ' he heard a lot of them moving at the opposite direction than where he arrived from. Despite continuing German military presence, he was successful, hiding himself in an open coal wagon. In the morning, the train seemed to pass a flat mountain range and continued generally in the north-westerly direction. Around mid-afternoon of that day Raynal estimated that the train was perhaps heading to the Ruhrland, the overpopulated industrial production centre of Germany, and that he must move off the train before it comes there.

He succeded again, unseen by anybody, and waited for the nearest sunset in a haystack. The night was clear and he easily spotted the North Star and turned his back to it. He only knew that neutral Switzerland, his destination, lies somewhere far to the south and can be reached if he follows that direction. That#s what he did for several nights, avoiding every human settlement. Luckily the days, when he slept in the woods or in a hay, were still relatively warm in the beginning of October and on the trees around the landscape there was enough ripe fruit that he didn#t starve too much at first.

But he grew steadily tired, his uniform, no longer giving any warmth, was now turning into tatters, his old military boots also tattering and, taking the worst, he was losing his way, as most nights were dark and no stars visible. The sketch map provided by his friend didn#t go that far and most of the villages that he risked to approach had their name signs intentionally removed, or their names didn#t help. Often he cursed his own laziness during the geography lessons in elementary school, especially when crossing multiple rivers and railway lines that could otherwise give him some advice where he was at the time.

During the rest of October, he started to starve again. Only a few times he managed to find some leftover potatoes on the fields and eat them raw, or find some hard bread in a garbage can. Then the relatively warm weather ceased and it started to rain heavily, temperatures just above the freezing point. Since then, Raynal didn#t get an hour of continuous sleep. The worst times came in early November when he unknowingly entered a military training area and had to spend a full week without food in a hastily dug underground cave, while rifle shots and artillery fire roared all around him. Only on Sunday when shooting ceased, he got out and continued his journey. He lost track of time in addition to his geographical position. Even when after a few days he saw a high mountain range in his southerly direction, he still couldn#t say where he was. And, always being of slim stature, he now seemed to look like a walking skeleton.

And then the worst came, when the first snow fell some time around mid-November. Until now Raynal managed to avoid any humans on his way, but now he knew that his trail would have been visible for days to anyone. And until now he at last managed to keep his feet dry, despite his tattering shoes, but that was not possible anymore. He entered a long valley leading to the centre of the mountains, where the forests were very dense and visibly devoid of any human presence, still moving southward, but desperation slowly sank on.

Those last days he estimated his progress at no more than five or six kilometers. And then, one night, he really felt being at the dead end. He stopped feeling his feet and several times fell on the ground, feeling nauseous. At the same time he started to feel incredibly sleepy. It was few hours after midnight and he knew that he was in terrible dilemma: "If I fall asleep now, I will freeze and never wake up. And if I don#t find a place to sleep, I will collapse from exhaustion and never will wake up as well".

It was then when he unexpectedly and painfully ran into a wooden construction. It was a wild-game feeding rack, common in the forested regions of Germany and France. On the lower tier there was only a block of salt and on the upper tier, one and half meters above the ground, there was a bit of hay. "If I lie into the hay, maybe I will survive till daylight comes and then I will be able to continue", he thought and, with great difficulty, managed to squeeze himself there. The hay was dry and soft, but it provided ' as ever - just an insulation for internally produced warmth, while Raynal felt frozen to the bone. Nevertheless, few seconds after resuming horizontal position he lost consciousness.

What woke him up was a loud noise that seemed like a cascade of falling pebbles nearby and Raynal #s heart jumped up instantly. He opened his eyes and instinctively tried to assume at least a sitting position. That#s when the narrow wooden rods making the floor of the upper tier of the feeding stack gave way under his meager weight and he fell down on the lower tier, and then on the snowy ground. "Misericordieuse Mere de Dieu!" exclaimed Raynal, a devout Catholic, reflexively.

He looked up ' it was already dim light around - and found himself lying at the feet of an enormous, mighty figure in some sort of dark green uniform that he never saw in Germany before. Apart from a long dark green mantle with two silvery fir branches attached to the collar (a rank insignia or a decoration?, he thought), the giant figure wore a woolly parka, so that only its eyes and nose were visible. No weapon was in sight, but the left hand held a large bag.

Raynal felt his hopes lost. After two months or so, he was about to be captured again! "Well, at least I live still", he thought. "And maybe one day I will be able to escape again". He tried to stand up, but his frozen and weakened legs didn#t cooperate. "Franz#se?" "A Frenchman?" asked a strangely modulated voice from behind the parka in surprised tone. Raynal nodded.

"Kriegsgefangene im flucht?" "Prisoner of war in flight?" asked the giant figure with an oddly sounding voice, its eyes firmly stuck on Raynal#s tattered uniform. Raynal vaguely recalled the Geneva convention on POW urging him to declare his true identity, and from his position on the ground reported between coughs in German: "Lieutenant Jean-Francois Raynal, Air Forces of the French Republic, military number 0964135, in flight from the Hannoverheide IV camp. I made no damage to anyone on my flight and I demand to be returned there without hassle".

Then the real surprise came, first in the form of intense giggling on part of the giant figure. Raynal looked dazed, not knowing what to do or say. The figure continued by raising its right hand and removing the parka in one motion.

What appeared was the biggest shock to Raynal from the start of his flight. The face that appeared was framed by very long wavy chestnut hair on both sides, and despite a little rough cut looking, it was unmistakably female. And not unattractive with its high cheekbones and thick red lips, in addition to piercing green eyes. Most important was though that the face was grinning widely. "Soybinvnuyshefrainalafroitnua" she said, or something sounding like that. "Pardon, Madame?" asked Raynal, not knowing still whether awake or dreaming.

The grin on the giant#s ' in fact a giantess# - face grew even wider and she repeated the same sounds more slowly. Even then it took Raynal a while to find out that it was, in fact, his own mother tongue ' "Soyez bienvenu chez Verena dans le Foret Noire" '"be welcomed at Verena#s in the Black Forest". How come, he wondered. "Mais vous parlez allemand?"-"But you speak German?", continued the strangely clothed giant woman in French with heavy German accent. Raynal nodded, still bewildered, and tried to stand again. Again he collapsed, but managed to answer positively in German.

The woman bent down and scooped his body in her arms and without difficulty she raised him in a powerful cradle hold. She looked in his eyes for a long time and Raynal tried, still dazed, to read from her look. "You must be frozen and starved almost to death, my poor little Lieutenant", she finally said in German with a hint of tenderness in her voice. "My name is Verena, I am a game-keeper from the W#rttemberg Forest Service, you don#t have to fear me at all. I live in a game-keeping lodge nearby. You can go with me there and I will fetch you at least a warm bath and something warm to drink and eat. You can also take a sleep there. Or I can just walk away and promise to you not to tell anybody that I have seen you. The choice is yours".

Raynal felt like his brain was as frozen as the rest of the body. He was, after all, surprised at being still alive, not mentioning this very unexpected encounter. "Vielen Dank, gn'dige Frau" ' "Thank you so much, merciful lady", he finally exclaimed. She giggled loudly and put him down and he collapsed for the third time. "Sorry, I see you are really exhausted. I can carry you. The lodge is less than two kilometers away and you weigh much less than the bags of animal food I carried to here. Plus the double footsteps will not betray us", said Verena putting Raynal#s body easily over her wide shoulder before starting her journey home. With her long strides she walked faster than he ever did without any cargo and her movements almost lulled him to sleep again.

But soon they were at a relatively big forestry house and once they were inside, Raynal was literally hit by a wall of warm air, for the first time in two months he felt a source of external warmth. Verena then put him on a bench, knelt and looked compassionately into his eyes again. "Please, wait here some twenty minutes, I will boil some water to make you a warm bath. Don#t make noise. At the same time the breakfast will be ready. Coffee or tea?"

To be continued soon-