Churchill's Secret Agent
Page 35
In Peace: Goodwill.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL
One day during my convalescence at the Eden-Roc, I received such a surprise visit. Who should show up to see me, but four of the Senegalese who had carried me down from l’Authion on a stretcher. The guard at the gate would not let them in. He called me on the phone. “Lieutenant, I have four visitors who want to come up. They are from Senegal. They have no right to enter the grounds without passes.”
I replied, “What are their names?” The guard asked them and told me. I didn’t know their names, but I responded, “Of course, I know them very well. They are responsible for saving my life. Direct them to my room.”
When they entered the suite, I could see that Colonel Passy was uncomfortable with their presence, but I didn’t care. He told his orderly to shut his door. I loved these men. Their smiles were radiant when they saw me. They told me that the battle had continued a long time after I was wounded. Eventually, the Germans and Italians who were still entrenched within the fortification surrendered, but we lost a lot of men. The Senegalese corporal was wearing a necklace of copper wire with ears strung onto it.
“Lieutenant, these are all ears cut from the Germans killed at l’Authion,” he said as he placed the treasured necklace around my neck. I was truly touched. This was an invaluable gift that represented personal pride and honor. Still, it made me uneasy. I pictured my nearly amputated leg as someone’s treasure of war and didn’t like the image. Defeating the Nazis and bringing an end to the war was all that was important to me. There had been enough maiming and killing.
Another surprise came shortly thereafter in the form of a visit by my mother and father. I remember it vividly. They both stood at the end of my bed. They did not approach. My mother wasn’t allowed to come close to me, and my father didn’t want to be. My father remarked with a smirk on his face, “Well, at least they didn’t shoot you in the back while you were running away!” My mother glared at him but said nothing. The orderly offered my mother a chair, but my father blurted out, “Don’t bother. We can’t stay long.” They were in my room for only about five minutes before they left. That was their only visit.
The war ended while I was still in the hospital. Late in 1946, a few days before I would finally be released, I heard a commotion out in the corridor. Next thing I knew, two sentries flanked my doorway. A cacophony of excited voices grew louder as they neared my room. I recognized the sentries’ uniforms. The men were British Royal Marines.
Suddenly, in the doorway stood the most recognizable man on the planet. Dressed in his habitual dark blue suit, with waistcoat and gold watch chain stretched across his ample stomach, he tipped his bowler to me in tribute. In the same hand he held a lighted cigar. The head nurse was loudly imploring him in French to put it out. He wheeled on her and politely said in English, which he knew she probably wouldn’t understand, “Madame, I have only a minute. Then I’ll be gone and, with me, my offensive cigar.”
Turning back to me, he thrust his free hand into the air. The index and middle fingers formed a big V. He winked and said, “Mon petit, la belle France est libre. Vive la France!”
“Vive la France, mon commandant,” I replied, an overwhelming joy filling my heart.
“Merci beaucoup, mon lieutenant.” He bowed toward me, sweeping his hand in a wide arc.
“Monsieur, je vous remercie, vous, le peuple britannique et tous nos alliés” (Sir, I thank you, the British people, and all our Allies.)
He strode toward my bedside, kissed my brow, and put his calling card and one of his signature Montecristo cigars into my hand. “We have a lot of fine restaurants to try together and a lot of catching up to do, mon petit. I’ve written my private number on the card. Call me at the villa as soon as you escape!”
He turned and left. The last thing I heard was the frantic head nurse yelling as she chased the greatest man to live in the twentieth century down the corridor. “No smoking! Il est interdit de fumer! C’est dangereux! Il est interdit de fumer!”
Max Ciampoli was seventeen years old and a lieutenant in the French army’s elite Alpine infantry on skis when France was invaded and swiftly defeated by Germany. Through his godfather’s friendship with Winston Churchill, Max was invited by the Prime Minister to come to England for training as a special agent, which launched his heroic wartime career. After the war, Max moved to the United States, where he found success in a number of professions, including chef/executive chef (in New York, Houston, and St. Louis); horse breeder in Missouri; owner of an exclusive car dealership (Classic Cars) in Beverly Hills; and luxury yacht dealer in Marina del Rey, California. Max became a U.S. citizen in 1956.
Coauthor Linda Ciampoli (née Rhodes) studied at the University of Bordeaux and the Sorbonne in Paris and is a graduate of the Department of French at UCLA. Also accomplished in many fields, Linda was pursuing a career in the hotel industry when she and Max met in Marina del Rey. They married in 1991 and are now working on their second book, which relates Max’s fascinating life in Haiti and the United States following World War II.
You can contact Max and Linda Ciampoli via their website at www.churchillssecretagent.com. Or you can e-mail Max at max@churchillssecretagent.com and Linda at linda@ churchillssecretagent.com.