Boyle, Kay "Frenchman's Ship."

Saturday Evening Post tag line: “He was a man without a country, alone, betrayed — until a sixteen year old boarding-school girl brought him something to live for.” Boyle, well-respected during a long career for her short stories, set this tale against the backdrop of the early days of America’s participation in World War 2. Her protagonist is an unhappy French merchant seaman, stranded in the U.S. by the War, who has taken a temporary job at a New Jersey riding stables that caters to the boarding-school trade. His beloved ship, clearly modeled after the NORMANDIE, “was being held for the duration on the Hudson’s New York side” and the Frenchman takes every opportunity to ride to the top of the Hudson’s Palisades to catch a glimpse of her. “They [the Germans] haven’t been able to get their hands on that much of France” he observes to the one young girl, Vivienne, who takes an interest in his fate. The story climaxes with the “thirty-five alarm fire call” that see’s his ship destroyed, much in the manner in which the NORMANDIE herself had been destroyed seven months earlier, with “half of the city’s population ... down there looking on.” Despite his unsuccessful attempt to break through police lines to try and help save the vessel, the Frenchman, nonetheless, in a very “Casablanca”-like ending, gains resolve and the courage to get back into action by going “north” to join up and fight Germany by whatever means possible.