The Deserter

"Come indoors," said plump, good-hearted Yvette Bleuse on that November evening in 1944. "You can sleep here. There's no sense in spending your money on a hotel." Wayne Powers, an awkward, bashful G.I. who was AWOL from his Quartermaster unit, gratefully accepted her offer--and stayed for 14 years.

Outside Yvette's tiny house in the tiny hamlet of Mont-d'Origny (pop. 1,500), the Battle of the Bulge raged a hundred miles to the east in the snowy Ardennes, Hiroshima was bombed, China fell to the Communists, bandits stole a million dollars in Boston, the Korean war began and ended, General Dwight Eisenhower became President of the U.S.. Stalin died, King Farouk fled Egypt, Mount Everest was scaled, Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier, Nasser seized the Suez Canal--nations fought and statesmen died and the seasons made their slow revolve in the Norman fields around Mont-d'Origny.

Under the Stars. Occasionally, late at night, Wayne Powers would take a breath of fresh air at his doorstep. But mostly he stayed quietly indoors, peeping from behind the curtain, taking care of his pet rabbits, tending the children--Dorothy, Jimmy, Douglas, Harry, Freddy. In the birth certificates, Yvette listed the children's father as "unknown." The neighbors viewed the strange union with Gallic tolerance and were closemouthed with strangers. Three times in the 14 years French police came, looking for "a missing American soldier." Each time Yvette hid Wayne in a cubbyhole under the stairs. Back in Chillicothe, Mo., Wayne's father gradually gave up hope of ever seeing him again; in 1950 Wayne's wife Ruth got a divorce on the grounds of desertion, and disappeared from town.

The end of it all came last spring when the gendarmes, looking for witnesses to an auto accident that happened outside Yvette's house, stumbled on Wayne. After questioning him, they turned him over to U.S. Army authorities in Verdun. Like a waking child, Wayne rediscovered a harsh world which he could no longer grasp. After 14 years with Yvette, he spoke French with a marked Norman accent. He barely understood English; even the G.I. uniform that was given him seemed unfamiliar.

The Propagandist. Crisp, competent Yvette, now a stout matron of 36, gave a fine display of peasant shrewdness. She wrote a personal appeal to President Eisenhower,, got daughter Dorothy to write to a French radio program, Vous Etes Formidables ("You Are Terrific"), asking that her father's predicament be broadcast. More than 100,000 letters poured into the U.S. embassy in Paris begging that Wayne be pardoned.

Last week, still uncomfortable in his new uniform, Wayne Powers was brought up before his court-martial in Verdun, pleaded guilty to the charge of desertion, waited for a light sentence. After all it had been a long time. But deserting, especially in war, is a high crime, and so the court-martial viewed it. The sentence: ten years at hard labor (maximum for desertion: death). The sentence is subject to review, and it may be drastically reduced. Said sturdy Yvette: "I've only one wish --that he be released soon so that we can get married and lead a normal life, taking the children out for walks on Sundays. Who knows? President Eisenhower lost one soldier--he may have gained four more, my four sons."

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