Before Their Time: A Memoir by Robert Kotlowitz Page A

produce from one village to the other. I could hear conversations, too, fragments of the real thing, a sharp provincial French that was spoken at such speed that I could barely make a word out here and there.
    But we could only look. Somehow the authorities—American? French? I never knew—had decided to keep us apart. Was it the fear that we might be infected by political ideas that would subvert our manly valor? Was it the possibility of catching a venereal disease, which we had been obsessively educated about from the day we entered the Army? Or was it just to save everyone from the sort of unpredictable trouble that often erupts when two people who are without a common language meet as occupier and occupied? Probably a bit of all three, and I resented it.
    But the regulations didn’t always work. Accidental meetings took place. Unexpected confrontations happened. We were all witness to them, mostly on our morning hikes where contact was unavoidable. One morning, for example, heading along a dirt road that ran through theback countryside, loping dreamily along, we passed a small stone house set a couple of feet back from the road. There were no other houses nearby; it was perfectly isolated and perfectly ordinary. (That morning we were just the third platoon, swinging along under Lieutenant Gallagher’s easy direction, enjoying the sharp saline smell that swept in from the coast with the morning fog.) The house, which seemed to speak precisely of Normandy, was shaded by an enormous ancient fruit tree. A sweet glimpse, I thought, of the true pastoral France.
    We slowed down as we stepped by; everyone wanted a look, I guess. I saw a small child, a girl maybe three years old, standing in the open doorway of the house, dressed in a blue peasant smock. She was sucking her thumb and gazing at her feet shyly, pretending not to see us.
“Bon-jour!”
I shouted, happy to be actually speaking French. Almost instantly, at my greeting, a hand reached through the doorway, grabbed the child by the shoulder, and pulled her inside. Then an angry wizened face, an old woman’s furious face, glowered at us a moment from the door, and disappeared. What was that, I wondered? We marched on, Gallagher suddenly giving the count in a loud voice. I looked back, hoping to see more, still wondering, but there was nothing, only an empty doorway and a giant fruit tree shading an old stone house.
    The experience was repeated a few days later, with a single variation. As we neared the house a second time, the child seemed to be waiting for us in the doorway, still sucking her thumb, still gazing at her feet. Once again, she was wearing her blue smock. This morning I did not shout a greeting. Nevertheless, as we passed, the child was againpulled inside the house, this time by a young woman wearing overalls and wooden shoes, and with a scarf covering her head.
    Before she disappeared, the young woman took a moment to stare at us. I saw her lips move as she said something to the child. Or to us, it was hard to tell. Then we were on our way again, Gallagher picking up the count in a loud voice, as he had the first time, moving along fast, as though he wanted to put the scene behind us.
    Of course, I began to think about the two women and the child, vague thoughts that never really came into focus, and I guess others did, too. But, in fact, none of us found the incident important enough to mention. By afternoon, we were back to bayonet practice and silly lectures.
    It happened only once again. This time, perhaps a week later, Gallagher decided that the platoon would take a break in the field that adjoined the stone house. There was plenty of room, no trees, level ground. Even so, I found this decision a little strange, as though Gallagher was asking for trouble, as though he wanted to precipitate some action, something he had an instinct for at times. We headed for the field, sprawled out back-to-back as we always did, lazed, and smoked. There was a