Word: pepita
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...name of the redheaded Mademoiselle, sometimes to be found sitting helplessly in her stalled jeep on a shell-pitted frontline road, is Andree-Claire Montboisses. But the passing G.I.s who joyfully go to her rescue shout: "Hello Pepita!" Since she arrived in Korea last July, the fame of willowy, green-eyed Pepita has spread up & down 145 miles of front. A registered nurse, an ambulance driver who won the Croix de Guerre evacuating wounded under fire in Belgium in 1940, a French Resistance fighter, Andree-Claire Montboisses is assistante sociale to the commander of the French volunteer battalion. No other...
Said a French soldier: "Up there it is cold and everyone is tired. Voila! One sees Mile. Pepita. She is as cold and as tired as anyone else, but still smiling." Pepita's uniform, like her rank, is unique: she wears tailored, olive green slacks, a white blouse beneath a woolen khaki jacket and a cerise scarf. In her small tent, which was sieved by mortar fragments last October, there is a salvaged dressing table littered with a dozen perfumes, powders and toilet accessories. Hanging from the tent pole is a Paris wardrobe. "For Tokyo," she explains...
Though fearless in her frontline social work, Pepita admits to one great terror: "Of mice and rats I have a loathing." At the sight of a Korean rodent she is likely to shout and climb atop the nearest ration or ammo box. Chic in the best French tradition, Pepita admits to 38 years (the chivalrous French have omitted her age from the battalion records), is pleased that no one in Korea has made a pass at her. Says she: "They are so very correct, always. It is all one family, and I am their sister. Oh, they are so fine...
Last week a new battalion commander ordered her not to go into the front line. Said shocked Pepita: "Five kilometers from the front! ... I might as well be dining at Maxim's!" Mademoiselle was angry to a degree which bearded Major Bertrand de Seze could describe only with closed eyes and a quick shaking of the head. Said she: "You may be sure I shall remain angry until I am back to the forward company." A French liaison officer guessed that that would not be long...