The Soldier's Girl: A gripping, heartbreaking World War 2 historical novel

by Sharon Maas

  She finally returned home on Boxing Day, when war resumed and von Haagen returned to work. She had hoped to avoid Oncle Yves; but there he was, coming up the stairs from the cellar, a bucket of coal in his hands.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you look like the cat who got the cream!’

  ‘Yes, well…’ she muttered, and ran up the stairs to her room. Crawling into bed, she wrapped the duvet around her shivering body, and curled into a foetal position. She could not face Oncle Yves’ prying questions today; she had to think. And as the glitter from the last two nights and the day between them fell away from her she began to make logical sense of her new status.

  The hours stolen from war and mayhem, the hours given to love, had thrown her completely off her previously so steady feet. And yet, now, regarding it all in the clear light of day and without the beguiling distraction of von Haagen’s presence, von Haagen’s hands, his lips, his body next to hers, his voice, his loving words, she found there was no regret, no sense of shame or guilt. But emotions tumbled within her, and she struggled to understand.

  As the morning slipped by the inner turbulence receded and an inkling of comprehension settled within her. What she had done in that stolen interlude, the persona she had been: that was Marlene Schuster, von Haagen’s Frau. The word Frau in German has a double meaning; woman as well as wife. She was both. His woman and, as Marlene, his future wife.

  He had said so himself. ‘You are my Frau. I don’t need papers to prove it, to justify it. Meine Frau.’

  It was an identity she had, as Marlene, embraced, agreed to embrace. She had fallen naturally into it without planning to, without scheduling it, without discussing it with Acrobat. And now it had happened there was no going back. It was up to her to live that role completely, as thoroughly as if she really was Marlene Schuster, an innocent citizen of Colmar wooed and won by von Haagen, a woman who had agreed to become his wife. She was playing a part and playing it thoroughly. It was just a role. She told herself that again and again. Just a role. And yet: a role she embodied so completely, so thoroughly, it was impossible to tell where the role began and she, the part of her that was not Marlene Schuster, ended.

  Because Jeanne Dauguet was also a role. Jeanne was an SOE agent, sent to France to help defeat the Boche, to win the war. Jeanne Dauguet was constantly on the alert; bland, watchful, competent. Jeanne was a skilled operator who considered options and acted accordingly. Jeanne Dauguet had taken the decision to let herself be usurped by Marlene Schuster. Jeanne Dauguet had gone into hiding; but she was still there, lurking in the background, awaiting her chance. She was an identity, no more than a skin to slip into and out of at will. A sly, ugly identity, one that would betray Marlene in a trice, and von Haagen. Stab them both in the back.

  And somewhere, far, far away, hidden in the depths of her subconscious, lay a third identity, bearing the label Sibyl Lake. Sibyl, over the last few months, had only seldom put in an appearance; basically, only Jacques could summon her, she came alive only for Jacques. But Sibyl, and Jacques, were right now so far away as to be nothing but a vague memory.

  Three identities, three roles. As the hours slipped by even Marlene, she who had surged to the forefront and taken over Christmas in a whirlwind of delight, receded. Not one of her three roles, she realised, had any real substance; not one of them was concrete not even Sibyl, her original identity. Each identity was really just a collection of attributes: characteristics, personal traits, flaws, virtues. Over the last few months she had learnt to slip in and out of each of them at ease; until Marlene had taken over.

  Did that make her, somehow, a hypocrite, a fraud, a Tartuffe, as in Moliere’s play? A despicable person who actually should be ashamed to show her face in a church? Von Haagen, if he knew the truth, would certainly think so. But he did not know. Only she knew the deeper truth: behind and beyond all of these single and separate identities, yes, even including the original one of Sibyl Lake, was a true one, a single one, a deeper one; an identity that could truly care and love, could feel love and revulsion and even hate – hate for the likes of Hitler and Himmler – an identity that was separate from each of those roles and yet gave substance to each of them.

  Right now, this real self carried the role and wore the label of Marlene Schuster. But behind that role and that label was this: a real and throbbing heart. A heart filled with genuine love, genuine caring; and now it was all directed at this so-called enemy, this man she had been sent to deceive and, one day, destroy. She had learned to meet him in a place of love; and love, if pure, if unselfish, is never deceitful. That was the truth.

  And then, from somewhere deep inside her, a voice rose up, stern, loud, dismissing all other voices: Shut up. Stop overthinking it all. Stop rationalising it all, stop analysing it all. You, Marlene, are in love. Give yourself up to that; live it as best you may and cross each bridge as you come to it.

  She rose from her bed, washed and dressed herself, stomped out the back door into the courtyard and back to the violin-maker’s house. She lit the fire, made herself some food and listened to records the rest of the day and into the night, and waited for von Haagen to come home.

  * * *

  It was less than twenty minutes to midnight on New Year’s Eve. Across the snowdrifts on the open rolling fields of Alsace, right across to the white snows of the Vosges foothills, figures clad in white crept south in stealth. It was the women who first heard the renewed rumble of war. Wary, they exchanged looks: was that American artillery, or French – or, God forbid –German? By now, after four years of annexation, their ears were keenly tuned to the differences, and fear clouded theIr glances. They knew; they had heard the rumours. It was time for the citizens of Alsace, once again, to hide in cellars, to pack their carts, once again to flee into the snow-covered mountains, to empty the streets of their towns and villages. The Boche was on the attack. Operation Nordwind had descended upon Alsace.

  The men of General Devers’ 7th army were still celebrating. Though General Patch had warned them that a German attack could be expected on New Year’s Day, the GIs were confident that the war would soon be over. After all, amost all of France had been restored to France, and all that was left was that small but pesky Colmar pocket. Russia was at Berlin’s door. Hitler must be frantic! Humiliating defeat would soon be his! The men laughed and celebrated the turn of the year. The American role in Europe would be that of an occupying force, restoring peace to a ravished Germany. Some of them might be sent off to Asia, to fight another day, but this chapter of war, Europe, was over. The Third Reich was in its death throes.

  But then, across the snowy fields, they came: men in white, camouflaged against the snow. The German onslaught was as terrible as it was swift. Tanks rolled through charming little villages, through the ravines of the Vosges, across the plains. Guns roared, bombs exploded. Just before midnight, American guns boomed in response to frantic calls: units in the mountains had been infiltrated and surrounded, and the eerie white-clad Boche was everywhere.

  On the dot of midnight, German radio sent out a personal broadcast by Hitler, who had not addressed his people since July 1944. Germany would never surrender! he proclaimed. It was a war unto death. Germany was on a God-given mission; this would be war without mercy. It might be the eleventh hour; but with the Almighty behind them, German triumph was assured.

  Close to the German border one patrol sergeant looked down from a small hill and saw the biggest swarm of Krauts he had seen in his life; all in white, in triangle formation, with the base of the triangle heading straight for his company.

  Soon the Americans were surrounded by the enemy; the GIs opened fire as the Germans charged, screaming Happy New Year, Yankee bastards! Happy New Year, sons of bitches!

  The attackers yelled and howled as they stormed the hill, cursing and behaving like drunken maniacs; the Americans poured fire on them, and in time the yelling gave in to the agonised screams of the wounded. It was a massacre; a massacre of Germans, the snow turned pink
from German blood, the ground littered with the dead and dying. It was just one of many such attacks across Alsace.

  * * *

  Sibyl became his Frau, his woman, his wife; warming his home, his bed. She provided him comfort when he came home, his spirit shattered and tattered from the living nightmare that was his daily fare, flinging his briefcase into a corner as if he could no longer bear the sight of it. The war was vicious, more vicious, perhaps, than in all the preceding years of Germany’s occupation of France. The death toll mounted, on every side; Americans, Frenchmen, Germans – their bodies lay scattered and bleeding in the forests of the Vosges and the ruined villages and the plains; their blood stained the once pristine snow and made of the province a slaughterhouse. Neither side seemed to be winning; but Colmar, at the centre of its pocket, held fast. Von Haagen came home sometimes late at night, and his Frau, his Marlene, would be waiting for him, soothing his soul, healing his inner wounds.

  ‘You are my salvation!’ he said to her, and sometimes he wept. She wept too. She wept for all the blood spent, all the wounds left gaping, the pain and the torture of war. She wanted to do more than soothe a single soul, heal a single heart that bled only in metaphor. The nationality of the wounded did not matter to her; she was as prepared to nurse Germans as she was to nurse a Frenchman or an American.

  ‘There must be a field hospital I can join, Wolf! I want to help, I want to work. I’m sitting uselessly in that cobbler shop all day, twiddling my thumbs. We have hardly any customers now. Surely there is something I can do to help? Surely the field hospitals accept volunteers, even if they are untrained? Can’t you enquire for me?’

  The lie, that she was untrained, slipped lightly through her lips. Marlene Schuster was untrained. Jeanne Dauguet had, it seemed, done some unskilled work in hospital and she had studied biology, after all; surely that experience could be of use in a field hospital? Von Haagen looked doubtful but promised to enquire.

  The reply, when it came, was negative. He gave no explanation. She suspected he had not enquired at all; for he wanted her all for himself. If she too came home shattered and tattered, who would rescue them both? She accepted his decision with a shrug and a sigh; as Marlene Schuster would.

  But every night, for just an hour, the hour when von Haagen slept deep and sound, Marlene Schuster became Jeanne Dauguet. In the silence and blackness of night Jeanne Dauguet would steal from their bed, from their room, and creep into the parlour, now already cold as the stove was dead. Jeanne Dauguet would sink to the floor in the corner where he had flung his briefcase in disgust. She would remove the latest papers, and with the help of the kitchen torch, inspect the notes von Haagen had made the day before. She would read the maps and try to make sense of them, as she had been taught in training. She would commit it all to memory. The first time she had done this she had gasped in shock: in a side pocket of the briefcase lay a Luger.

  But of course von Haagen carried a gun. He was a soldier. Soldiers carried weapons. As did agents. But her own gun, a Sten, was nowhere nearby, for Marlene Schuster did not need a gun. The Sten was hidden away in Margaux’s attic. There it was safe; and she was safe. As long as she was Marlene Schuster she was safe. At the end of each night’s briefcase inspection Jeanne Dauguet returned to their bed and became Marlene Schuster.

  Every day, for a few minutes, she also became Jeanne Dauguet when she made her notes in tiny writing on scraps of paper; and later again, when Madame Guyon came by to cook a simple midday meal for her and Oncle Yves, and she slipped that piece of paper into a slot in her shoe.

  For the rest of her time she was Marlene Schuster, von Haagen’s Frau. How proudly he used that word now, the word with the double meaning! Meine Frau. My woman, my wife. Just as she could, if she so wished, refer to him as Mein Mann. My man, my husband. They were no longer boyfriend and girlfriend; more than merely lovers. Mann and Frau.

  And then came the night that everything changed. Leafing through the pile of papers on the floor next to the briefcase, she came across a new document. It was different from the others, which were mostly scribbled notes and sketches, maps, thumb-marked protocols of meetings. What she found was a stiff, shiny new document bearing the red official seal of a public notary, one based in Freiburg, across the Rhine. She remembered he had had to go to Freiburg a few days ago, for military reasons; he must have done this then.

  On the cover page was written, in the spiky Fraktur typeface of the Third Reich, in thick black letters, the word ‘Testament’. Her hand shook as she turned the page; her eyes misted over as she read the second page. Von Haagen’s will was simple. He had left all his worldly possessions, including his villa in Munich, to his Frau Marlene Schuster.

  That was the moment that Jeanne Dauguet died. It was a gentle death, a simple fading away into nothing, a dissolution into the entity that was Marlene Schuster. She placed all the documents back into the briefcase, clicked its lock, crept back to bed, wrapped her arms around von Haagen, and wept silently into the dawn.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, trouble was brewing. On January 1st General Eisenhower instructed General Devers – responsible for the defence of Alsace – to retreat. American troops were sorely needed in the Ardennes; Alsace was not worth saving, at least, not worth saving to the Americans. Hearing the news, General de Gaulle was incensed; he ordered his Defence Chief of Staff to return to Eisenhower and ‘shake him up’. De Gaulle had taken the decision to defend Alsace, with the aid of Allied forces; but, if necessary, France would defend Alsace on its own. Strasbourg, said de Gaulle, must be defended toward and against everyone; if required, house to house. If necessary, Strasbourg would become a French Stalingrad. De Gaulle gave orders to General de Lattre de Tassigy of the Free French army to assure the defence of Strasbourg, with or without the Americans. Telegrams whizzed back and forth, to US President Roosevelt, and to Winston Churchill; Roosevelt was informed that the French could not accept the withdrawal of American troops, and a copy was sent to Chuchill, with the request to support the French. Roosevelt replied that he would defer to Eisenhower on the decision. But Churchill left at once for Versailles.

  On January 3rd, Eisenhower, de Gaulle and Churchill gathered for a crisis meeting; Eisenhower and de Gaulle both argued their sides, while Churchill adjudicated. Eisenhower accused the French leader of too much emotion and declared his order would stand. De Gaulle’s response was that the decision would rupture the Allied command and that he would withdraw the French armed forces from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. Eisenhower flew into a rage; if the French pulled out of SHAEF, he said, they would receive no further petrol, ammunition or logistical support from the Americans. De Gaulle said that if America deprived the French of war supplies he would deprive the Allies of the use of the French railway system and communication facilities. If America withdrew from Strasbourg, he said, he would give the order to a French division to barricade itself inside Strasbourg. ‘Before the scandalised world, you will be obliged to go in and free it.’ It was a verbal battle of one-upmanship; and to everyone’s relief at this point Eisenhower gave in; he modified his orders, and instructed General Devers to hold Strasbourg firmly. As he left the meeting, Churchill remarked to Eisenhower: ‘I think you’ve done the wise and proper thing.’

  Chapter 51

  It was the following evening that Sibyl finally found the solution to her crisis of truth. It was so very simple – why hadn’t she thought of it weeks ago? Now, the idea came to her as von Haagen came back early from a frustrating day on the field. They had not been able to get very far, he complained; the bloodstained snow was too thick, too strewn with bodies that there had been no passage. And Germany was losing.

  ‘I am sick to my stomach of this war,’ he said. ‘I just want it over and done with. I don’t care any more who wins. I don’t care about honour and pride. Damn Hitler for putting us through this ordeal! The man is mad, stark raving mad.’

  He had often made such utterances, and since the s
tart of January and the launch of Operation Northwind they were becoming ever more traitorous to his own side. Now, he fiddled with the radio and found the BBC. The five pips sounded, and then the news. So different to the furious propaganda spouted by Goebbels on Deutschlandfunk, the rabid rants proclaiming an imminent triumph for the invincible God-ordained German troops. In calm, cut-glass English, the newsreader described the good news of Allied progress in Alsace; the Colmar Pocket would soon be cleared, he prophesised, after which the Allies would cross the Rhine and proceed into Germany. It all seemed so obvious, so predestined, so peaceful. Who would not be convinced?

  And suddenly it came to her. The brilliant solution to all her problems. The easy, obvious way to win this war.

  So obvious. Yes, it had been obvious for a long time but she had been blind; blinded, perhaps by her own shame, her own guilt; the knowledge of the uproar the step she must take would cause; anger on von Haagen’s part, no doubt, fury even. But then she would take him in her arms, soothe him, calm his anger, explain to him, apologise, show him that she’d had no choice, really; let him know the truth of her slow but gradual and unrelenting growth into love.

  She must turn him. Recruit him. She must confess.

  Then he would be the spy, not her.

  It was so very simple.

  Turning a German: surely the highest service a British agent could provide! Then there would be no more subterfuge. No more lies. No more sneaking around in the dark. Nothing more behind his back. Everything would be out in the open because now he would be working for her, delivering German secrets, German plans into her hands. The war would be over in a matter of days. Surely.