The Widow's Trip

Each summer for 16 years, the citizens of Mayenne (pop. 10,000), a river town 150 miles west of Paris, had pleaded with Maggie Mae McRacken, now a 48-year-old widow and a $50-a-week sales-clerk in a Charlotte, N.C., sundries shop, to come and visit them. But for reasons of health, family responsibility, finances and natural reticence, Maggie McRacken never got to Mayenne--until last week. Then, she and the townfolk of Mayenne finally met at the end of an intensely sentimental journey.

Maggie McRacken was once the wife of a quiet. Red Springs, N.C., farm boy ("He was so good and I was so lucky to have him that it scared me") who, at 27, and just 3 1/2 years after their marriage, became Private James Dougal McRacken, a soldier in the U.S. Army's tough Normandy-landing goth Division. On the night of Aug. 5, 1944, McRacken and eleven other G.I.s crouched behind a tank as the 90th approached Mayenne on its drive toward Paris. Retreating German troops had blown up two of three bridges across the Mayenne River to stop the Americans; the Germans planned to dig in for an all-out fight for the town. Only the 150-ft.-long Savings Bank Bridge remained, and a 250-lb. bomb and 15 cases of dynamite had been wired to blow its stone structure to bits.

Dahlias. Suddenly and surprisingly, Private McRacken sprinted ahead of the U.S. tank and ran 500 yds. down the exposed street to the bridge. German machine gunners and riflemen had clear shots at deadly range. McRacken slashed wildly at the white wires, then fell dead at the center of the bridge, his body across the disconnected lines, his clippers at his side. Dozens of Mayenne townfolk watched McRacken's dash and death from their windows, saw the Americans then speed across the bridge to rout the Germans out of town. Villagers stole out on the bridge, placed a white sheet on Private McRacken's body and smothered it with dahlias.

At war's end, grateful Mayenne placed a wreath at the bridge's center. Then the town built a marble monument, bearing an image of McRacken's face and the legend: "Ici pour sauver ce pout, James McRacken, 315 Bataillon, U.S.A., se sacrifia le cinq Aout, 1944." President Truman sent a message for its dedication; General Charles de Gaulle knelt to place a floral Cross of Lorraine. Through the years, schoolchildren replaced the flowers as they withered. Each Aug. 5, the residents followed their mayor to the bridge to pay their somber respects to Jim McRacken. Each Christmas, they sent a gift to McRacken's daughter. And, regularly, they invited Maggie McRacken to visit Mayenne. Wrote former Mayor Charles Drou: "Our home is yours, for except for your husband, we would have no home."

Mayenne Worries. In North Carolina, Maggie McRacken packed away her husband's Distinguished Service Cross and the messages from generals and the President. She worked hard, saw her daughter Myrtis Ann, graduate from high school last June. A quiet woman, Mrs. McRacken seldom mentioned her husband's heroism or Mayenne's continued devotion to his memory. Her employer had never even heard the story. But recently a friend got the Charlotte Observer interested. People throughout North Carolina contributed more than $1,500 to send Mrs. McRacken and Myrtis Ann to Mayenne.

But after its long wait, Mayenne was afraid it was not ready. August is vacation time in France. "Our ceremony will be much too simple," worried Mayor Lucien de Montigny. "Members of the municipal band will not be on hand to play the American and French anthems. The magistrates are on vacation. We are afraid that Mrs. McRacken will be disappointed."

Maggie McRacken was not disappointed. Last Saturday, on the 17th anniversary of his death, the widow and daughter of Private McRacken were honored at a small, tearful reception in Mayenne's 16th century city hall. They stepped to the center of the old stone bridge, stood silently at the flower-banked monument while an American bugler blew taps, a U.S. Army band played The Star-Spangled Banner and the Marseillaise, and 2,000 villagers watched solemnly.

It was all very simple, and entirely fitting to the memory of the Red Springs farm boy whose wife, proud though she was, could still wonder: "I'll never know what made him run out from behind that tank to save that bridge in the face of certain death."

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