Jolie entered the winery kitchen. "To what do i owe this rescue from Henri's grape sorting table?" she asked in French. His youthful Aunt Jolie had been on Nico's mind since puberty. He handed her the photo of Ted Treharne.
"François! It was Christmas time in 1944. Guy and Hervé found him unconscious near the bottom of a riverbank in the woods between Burnon and Chaumont. I was only 17; he was wearing winery workers clothes when he arrived in the caves under Guy's father's winery. I can see how handsome he would have looked in that US Army uniform -- even with the distinguished scars now on his face."
"Thanks to Henri's brother's shipping connections, I had escaped to Montreal with the young children," Yvonne-Marie interjected. "But Jolie stayed in Burgandy, and soon she was old enough to work with The Resistance."
"We were secretly moving Frenchmen to London to join de Gaulle. We were hiding betrayed partisans. We were stockpiling weapons and sabotaging German communications. We were rescuing downed Allied airmen; we were scouting locations of German Army Units. Our moveable headquarters were in the tunnels under Beaune, but in caves near Gus' father's wineries, I was caring for the wounded. François was alive but unresponsive when Guy and Hervé brought him in.
"Guy and Hervé had been in the Ardennes disguised as garlic farners. Their primary mission was to discover the locations of German Army units. But false identities and workers clothes were hidden in their truck. From the insignia on his winter combat uniform and the Thompson Submachine gun that lay beside his bike, they surmised that François (the identity they soon gave him) was probably a forerunning intelligence officer with the US Army -- on the route to Bastogne in the same area they were scouting -- when his Harley Davidson crashed in the ice and deep snow. We did not usually pick up wounded US soldiers; they had people to do this, but François was in the woods by himself, on one of the coldest days in Ardennes history. Guy and Hervé threw his uniform, dogtags, and papers into the river They thought he would know how to get him to his unit when he woke up. Meanwhile, in case they were stopped by the Germans, it was best not to know details about who he was."
