Dahlberg hid among the bullrushes in the pond. “I just had my head sticking out, but sure enough, not long after I got there, some German soldiers came looking for me. They must have seen my parachute coming down. I snapped off a dry reed, and I was able to get completely submerged and breathe through it like a snorkel. It worked.”
The German searchers moved on, and after a long wait, Dahlberg came out of the water. He was met by a Frenchman, who happened to be Denis Baudoin. “He said, ‘Stay right here and I’ll be back.’ He came back pretty soon and he had sort of a trench coat. He asked me for my shirt, which, of course was soaking wet, and he brought me up into the woods next to the water. He said, ‘You’ll have to stay here because the Germans are still in the house.’ The German commanders were staying temporarily in his chateau.
Dahlberg did have to sign a waiver, because, according to the Geneva rules of warfare, he can be shot as a spy.
“The next morning, he brought me my shirt back, and he brought me some bread and wine. The shirt was not only washed, but it was neatly ironed. He left promptly, and I was just sitting there on a log. I felt something in my shirt pocket, and took it out. It was wrapped in some French newspaper. I unwrapped it, and it was three contraceptives. Now, when you go on a three-day pass, it was Army policy to issue you three contraceptives. But I was a good Lutheran boy, and I came back from my pass with all three in my pocket. When the laundress, a young eighteen-year-old girl, found them, she carefully repackaged them in this newspaper and put them back in my perfectly ironed shirt pocket. I didn’t know if that enhanced or degraded my reputation in France. I was really embarrassed.”
By this time, the Germans had left the chateau, and Dahlberg was invited into the main house. It was a nice change from the woods, although he did have to puzzle out the bidet next to his room. Baudoin had saved some of his wine cellar from the Germans by walling it off from the rest of the basement. That night when the family gathered for dinner, Baudoin told Dahlberg that he was breaking open the last bottle from a particular vintage. “I don’t know what kind of wine it was, except that it was red and it was in harmony with my red corpuscles.”
