BY STEVE DAMISH
Metro Editor
As War Ends, Wedding Bells Ring
Amalio "Gio" Giovanniello sat on a street side in the Bavarian city of Regensburg, his rifle on his lap, and cupped a rare, wallet-size photograph of the French girl in his hands.
The picture had come with the latest batch of love letters from Paulette Limousin the woman he was going to marry and he stared at it, transfixed.
I still can't believe this beautiful French girl loves me!
Not long ago, in the midst of battle and huddled in a foxhole, he had devoured each new letter like a starving man.
 | 
Amalio "Gio" Giovanniello and his new bride, the former Paulette Limousin, in a photograph hanging in their Avon home.
The parents of Paulette Limousin and Amalio Giovanniello met just once, when Paulette's mother, Adele, above center, visited Brockton in 1957. She is shown with Gio's mother, Ersillia, left, and father, Mickele. In back are Gio's siblings.
|
But now, in May 1945, three days after Germany's surrender to the Allies, Gio put her words aside and read the face in the photograph instead.
It was a new photo, taken well after Gio had knocked on an apartment door during the liberation of Paris and saw Paulette for the first time.
She had been a survivor of the Nazi occupation then anxious and fatigued.
But the face looking out from this photo nestled between a perfect black pompadour and a dress Paulette had designed seemed relaxed, rested.
That made Gio happy.
The war was over, and for Gio and Paulette their days of dodging death behind them it was time to start living.
As part of the Army occupation force in Regensburg, the medieval German city on the Danube River, Gio expected it would take months for him to be reunited with Paulette.
The separation didn't seem so daunting after all they had been through. Besides, they were making plans for a lifetime.
"We had more time, so by now we were writing a lot of letters to each other, and by now I actually found some real paper to use," said Gio, who had been reduced to writing on toilet paper at the front.
"But we knew we'd be married the next time we saw each other. I must have proposed several times in a bunch of different letters. I'm not sure if she ever responded, 'Yes,' but that didn't matter. We both knew."
They decided they would be married as soon as Gio arrived at the French port of Le Havre, the last stop for soldiers shipping out to the United States.
Gio wanted a special gift for his fiancee and found an artist, a German prisoner, who could execute a full-size oil painting of a rare scene Gio and Paulette together.
Gio posed for two weeks in Regensburg, and the artist used a photograph of Paulette to paint her likeness into the picture.
Late that summer, Gio left for Le Havre in a column that stretched for miles, his painting secured in a wooden box strapped to the roof of his truck.
Paulette's letters his treasure were bundled safely in his pack, as always.
But as the truck bounced along a dirt road, the box tumbled off.
"I almost died right there," Gio said.
Gio shouted for the driver to stop, but the column had orders to keep the trucks moving at speed. Gio saw no other choice he jumped, careening into a ditch and injuring his left arm.
He ran to the box as two Sherman tanks rolled over it. Gio gasped but the treads of both missed the painting.
He grabbed his artwork, hoisted himself onto another truck, and resumed his trip to Le Havre.
The wedding present would ride next to the groom the rest of the way.
As much as fate seemed to have brought Gio and Paulette together, the rest of the world seemed determined to keep them apart.
Gio's superiors and fellow soldiers at Camp Lucky Strike in Le Havre tried talking him out of marriage.
His commander back home in Brockton his mother, Ersillia wrote and tried convincing him it was a mistake.
Everybody gave him the same argument he would be tearing apart two families for the sake of a woman he barely knew and couldn't possibly love.
"They kept telling me that I hadn't had the chance to be with her and get to know her," said Gio. "But they were wrong. I knew her. Through the letters, I knew her better than I've known anybody."
Paulette's family was equally set against the marriage, especially her Uncle Maurice, who had become the family's patriarch since her father's death the previous year.
Maurice demanded Gio break off the relationship and return to the United States without his French "souvenir."
"But I had been through a war," Gio said, "so he didn't concern me too much."
Only the Army brass seemed to be on the side of the young couple; Gen. George S. Patton himself signed the form giving Gio permission to marry.
The couple planned to be married, per French tradition, by the mayor of Gentilly in a civil ceremony at city hall that's all they had time for, anyway.
First, Paulette's biographical information had to be posted on a wall at city hall so, as the law allowed, any French citizen could object to the marriage. It was supposed to be posted for three days, but Gio, ever the master talker, negotiated it down to one.
The couple had one day to carry out their plan one day to reunite, ride the train to Paulette's birthplace of Juvisy-sur-Orge, retrieve a copy of her birth certificate and return to Gentilly for the ceremony.
In the 13 months since the American soldier had met the French girl, they had seen each other on just seven days. But they had the letters he had 400 from her, and she had more than a 100 from him.
And they had no doubts.
On Sept. 29, 1945, a beautiful day in postwar Paris, they stood at Gentilly City Hall, staring and smiling at each other, much as they had the first time they sat together in the basement of her apartment building the day of the air raid alarm.
But this time, after the staring and smiling and a few words from the mayor the couple embraced and kissed.
Gio and Paulette were married.
Paulette's mother, Adele, and her older sister, Simone, attended the 1 p.m. ceremony. About an hour later, a furious Uncle Maurice stormed up the stairs of Gentilly City Hall, his right hand fingering an object in his coat pocket everybody suspected it was a gun.
He had come to stop the wedding and send this GI on his way.
He intercepted Gio and Paulette, arm in arm, at the top of the stairs, but quickly learned they were already married.
Gio stared down the angry Frenchman, saying, "Careful, Maurice. You don't want to make Paulette a widow on the day of her wedding, do you?"
A confused Maurice turned to Paulette and said, "But you told me the wedding was at 3 p.m."
She looked at Gio, then back at her uncle.
"You're right, I did. But don't blame me. That was my husband's idea."
As usual, Gio and Paulette wouldn't get any time alone. They had photos taken in Paris, then returned to Paulette's home for a dinner with her family.
There was no honeymoon, and little celebration Paulette knew Gio had to return to Camp Lucky Strike at 9 p.m. He was scheduled to depart for New York in two days.
The couple figured they would have to resume writing letters, but when Gio's departure was delayed, the two Catholics began planning a church wedding.
A week later, Gio and Paulette were married again, this time by a priest. There still was no honeymoon he had to return to camp that night but the couple finally had a day together, alone, before the church wedding.
"Hey, we were already married, don't forget," said Gio.
Her family, including a calm Maurice, attended the church ceremony, and there were more photos and another dinner at the Limousins' apartment.
At 10 p.m., Gio and Paulette said goodbye to each other. Gio had to go home, back to the United States.
This time, they would be apart for six months.
Before parting, the twice-married couple sat in her bedroom, embraced, and made another vow of eternal love.
Although they would soon be separated by an ocean, they would always be together, because they had just made "la promesse eternelle."
Gio's ship sailed two days later.
Two years earlier, when he went off to war, Gio thought he was leaving everything that mattered behind in America.
He was coming home with mixed emotions, because now he had left what mattered most in Europe.
He carried little, having left the boxed oil painting in Paulette's basement the painting disappeared a few months later, and he never saw it again.
But he had her letters, all 400 and he knew he would eventually have her, too.
After 12 days at sea, he reached New York, where his brother met him and brought him back to his home on Otis Street in Brockton.
"When I walked in, my mother took one look at me from the kitchen and collapsed, right on the floor," said Gio. "The heartache she must have felt. She told me later she prayed for me every day, but died a hundred times not knowing how I was. I realized right there what I had put her through by not writing more to her."
The family helped his mother to a chair, and after catching her breath, she thanked God for the return of her son, and then asked Gio: "Did you really get married over there?"
Gio returned to civilian life in October 1945. He went back to school studying architecture, worked for his father, Mickele, managing property, and prepared a room at his parent's home for the arrival of Paulette.
Everywhere he went, people asked about the war but mostly they wanted to know about his wife.
She would be Brockton's first French war bride, after all, and maybe the first in New England.
He wrote to Paulette daily, and his family marveled at his knowledge of French and his love for this woman they had never met.
On March 12, 1946, six months after Gio had left, the ever sturdy Paulette boarded the huge Italian passenger liner Vulcania without hesitation, bound for New York.
She was leaving the only country she had ever known and the only family she had.
The vessel brimmed with French and British war brides. Many were like Paulette they had married a GI, only to bid him farewell the next day.
Dozens of honeymoons would begin once Vulcania docked in New York.
Paulette had spent the last several months in Paris perfecting her skills as a seamstress and trying to learn a new language Italian, because that's all that was spoken in the Giovanniello home.
On the New York pier, a hush of expectation fell over the throng of veterans gathered to greet Vulcania. Gio fidgeted with his suit, his heart racing, as the ship slid into its berth.
Hundreds of women lined the decks of the ship, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of their husbands. Far below, the men surged forward, their necks arching in unison.
Gio hadn't seen or talked to his wife in six months, but the instant the petite, well-dressed woman with the pompadour hair appeared at the top of the gangplank, he knew it was her.
She saw him, and their eyes locked.
Gio had difficulty breathing his skin felt on fire as she descended. "I don't think I blinked for 10 minutes," he said.
When she reached him, neither said a word for a moment. They just stood, stared at each other and smiled, almost a re-enactment of their day together in the basement of the Gentilly apartment building.
Then, amid the tumult of dockside reunions and celebrations, the old soldier and the French girl held each other in a long embrace.
And kissed.
And cried.
And kissed again.
The couple would long remember that moment, holding each other on the dock, as the happiest of their lives.
Paulette hadn't brought much, just a couple of bags and the suit she wore. It was an outfit that looked strangely familiar to Gio.
It should have.
Paulette had fashioned the suit from a U.S. Army blanket, dying the wool blue and using her skills as a seamstress to create an outfit she had saved for this special occasion.
It was Gio's blanket the one he had given to her in Gentilly on the night of the air raid siren, when a weary GI and a forlorn French girl sat in a basement in Paris and exchanged stares, then smiles and then addresses.
"If you get a chance, by all means write," Gio had told the French girl that night. "Write me a letter or two. I would appreciate it."
Metro Editor Steve Damish can be reached at sdamish@enterprisenews.com.
Copyright 2005 The Enterprise
