It took years for Monique Raguet Jones to realize why she could not bear to have anything on her face. Or why the smell of hay upset her so.

But as she taught French classes and told stories about her childhood in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, the link became clear.

Her discomfort with any type of mask stemmed from her memories of air raids, when she and her classmates had to run down 350 steps while securing gas masks to their faces. She associates the smell of hay with staying in barns with hundreds of other refugees who fled the city of Verdun during the Nazi invasion.

Mrs. Jones, 78, of Daugherty, Beaver County, teaches French at Butler County Community College's Cranberry campus.

She was 8 years old and living in Verdun when the Nazis invaded the city. She later worked as a translator between the Americans and French when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed.

The family ran a cafe in Verdun, and her father, Jean, was postmaster and a captain in the French army. When World War II began, her father was sent to command a post in the south of France.

When the city was evacuated in advance of the Nazi invasion in 1939, Mrs. Jones, her mother, Gemaine, and sister, Arlette, 15, got on a train that was packed with wounded French soldiers returning from the front.

"We were stopped in the middle of a valley. We saw people running down the hill. They were dressed as priests and nuns and, all of a sudden, they started shooting at us," she said. "We took cushions and put them against the windows of the train."

The "priests and nuns" were German and Italian soldiers, shooting at the wounded French soldiers.

"Somebody opened the door to our cabin. We were told, 'That's it. You're on your own,' " she said.

The three got out and walked. Mrs. Jones said the only things she had were her name tag, a small bag and a gas mask.

"We were very lucky if we could find a barn or someplace else to sleep in," she said. "Italian airplanes would swoop down on us as we were walking and we would lie on the ground. One time, I got up and the person next to me was shot."

When they reached Dijon, they were told that it was safe to return to Verdun. They walked back and were among the first civilians to come back to the city. All the monuments and all the hotels were flying the Nazi flag.

"We just missed Hitler by one day," she recalled.

Mrs. Jones made a distinction between the German soldiers and Hitler's SS force. The German soldiers were easy to deal with, she said.

"I have to admit, they were very nice and very polite with us," she said. A German soldier even gave her a flower when she made her First Communion, she said.

Food was scarce. The family got a voucher for one pound of meat per month for the three of them, she said. "The only way we survived -- we had a garden."

School resumed, but the German soldiers were running it. Physical fitness was emphasized. Students received vitamin-enriched cookies and inoculations. She said the soldiers took special care of children who had blond hair and blue eyes, which she did, because those were characteristic of Hitler's ideal of a master race.

Around 1943 or 1944, her father returned, and her sister and her friends had joined the French Underground.

A friend told them "something was going to happen." That something was the Allied forces landing in Normandy.

The Americans drove the Germans out of Verdun, and life got back to normal. Her father resumed his position as postmaster. The Americans moved on at Christmas time in 1944.

"On Christmas Eve, the Germans decided to come back. We had to go to the air raid shelter," she said.

The Americans counterattacked and drove the Germans away, this time for good. The Americans left in 1946 and returned in 1948, building barracks and gyms and introducing the locals to boxing and swing music.

Mrs. Jones had picked up English as a third language, in addition to French and Latin, and could speak well enough that she was enlisted to translate between the French and Americans. In 1951, she was the third person hired to work under Gen. Dwight Eisenhower at the start of NATO. She translated for a French colonel, who served as a liaison officer to the Americans, she said.

"You didn't realize how important your job was," she said. "They would come and pick me up at my house in a car with a star on the side, and bring me back at dinner time."

Gen. Eisenhower himself would come in once a week to sign paychecks. Had she known he would become a U.S. president, she said, she would have saved one and not cashed it.

In 1951, she married an American and continued working for NATO until her husband was recalled to the United States in 1952.

They lived in Lancaster, Pa., and New Jersey and raised three children. That marriage did not last. She has been married to her second husband, Paul Jones, for 29 years and lived in Florida for 20 of them.

When she returned to Pennsylvania, she thought she would put her native language to good use and began summer French lessons in Beaver.

Her students at Butler County Community College, hearing her tell stories of her childhood, persuaded her to write down her memories.

Last year, she put all of her memories, including photos, into a self-published book, "39 Quai de Londres, Verdun, France," her childhood address -- 39 London St. The book is published under her maiden name, Monique M. Raguet, and is dedicated to her mother "for her strength and courage."

Her students believe Mrs. Jones has strength and courage as well.

Rita Schoeffel, of Jackson, who recently completed the Introduction to French class at the college, said, "I found not only the class but also the teacher to be quite interesting. ... When she told about she, her mother and sister fleeing the German Army, mostly on foot, a distance equal to more than half-way across the state of Pennsylvania, it made me think of endurance and determination."

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