by David Leroy
He sat down again in the back row, looking forward, slowing raising his eyes until he saw the cross. After twenty minutes, he kneeled. His stomach rumbled, as if he were going to vomit up all of his fears. Then he whispered the words to a god he had not spoken to for twenty-two years. “Oh God, please, help me get home.”
June 2, 1940
Vichy, France
“Dora, the Post wrote that the State Department says, if you missed the Manhattan on June 2 from Genoa, to go to Bordeaux for the George Washington,” her sister said from the other side of the Atlantic. Dora cupped her ear to drown out the noise of the callers in the busy international phone exchange. The room was packed and crowded with all manner of travelers speaking different languages.
“That is too long. I am going to go south to Lisbon.”
“But Bordeaux is closer. Please don’t,” her sister pleaded.
“I will call you again when I reach Spain, but my plan is to get out on the Pan Am Clipper. Look, I need to go. I love you and will be home soon. Don’t worry,” she said as she hung up the phone. She then looked at all the people, each one trying to reach a loved one or make their own arrangements. It reminded her of a busy Christmas Eve on the East Coast of America, yet without the joy.
June 2, 1940
Tours Train Station, France
Nigel woke as the train came to a stop. All of the passengers stood and waited to leave the car. He was still half asleep but stood and left the car all the same. The connecting train waited on a separate platform. After sitting down, he realized that he had left his bags in the previous train car.
He ran quickly back to the car. His bag was nowhere to be seen. He heard the whistle of the departing train. He looked frantically through the car. Perhaps it had moved? He searched the front of the car. The whistle blew a second time and much longer. Then three short snorts and he heard the conductors make a last call. He ran back to the rear of the car, thinking it was on the rack. He returned to his chair and looked underneath for the third time. He could hear the train leaving the station.
He sat down and started to punch the seat in front of him. He pulled back his hand after his knuckles caught the edge and cut him. Nigel looked up to see if anyone else was coming to the empty train car. He then remembered and checked inside his jacket. He pulled out his wallet: thirty-five francs. It was not enough for another train. His mind began to race. He could feel a sweat coming over him. He hit the chair again and it snapped back at him. Then he curled up in the seat next to him and began to cry, hoping that no one would enter the car.
June 2, 1940
Genoa, Italy
On June 2, Larry, with his family, and David boarded the SS Manhattan. As the ship docked in the morning, he could see the giant American flags painted on both the bow and stern. Along the amidships section in bright white letters read, “UNITED STATES.”
“Here is your number. Are you traveling alone?” the officer asked him. A desk had been set up just before the gangway.
“Yes. Well, no. I know this family,” as he looked behind him.
“Are you a relative?” the officer pressed.
“No, no, just friends.” David glanced at the ledger as the officer looked over his papers.
“I don’t have any cabins, but I can put you together with them if you like. I have the smoking room and the lounge. We are trying to keep young kids inside yet close to the boats,” the officer said, writing his name in the ledger.
David looked back at Larry and his wife Margarette. “It will be fun.” He then looked down at Larry’s young daughter. “Like a camping trip. You like camping, right?” Then he turned back to the officer and said in a soft, dignified tone, “We’ll take five together for the lounge, please,” while he focused his mind upon the rose-colored marble altar of the church back in the port.
“Here are your cot numbers,” the officer said, and passed back their papers.
June 2, 1940
Paris
Marc left the Metro and started to walk toward the embassy. He noticed people on the street reading flyers strewn everywhere on the ground. He picked one up and started to read the warning of the approaching bombardment.
“Is this real?” he asked the secretary when he walked in.
“Yes, maybe. To them, it is real,” the secretary nodded toward the lobby filled with people in all sorts of dress waiting to apply for American visas.
After dinner, Marc sat with Marie’s family around the radio. No one spoke a word, each one lost in his or her own world, poring over the meaning of every French word. The tension on the dial was too much, and the station would slip. Marie’s father got up and then tuned it back into the official station.
“Go to sleep, I told you two,” Marie’s mother told her little sister and brother.
“But we can’t. It is too loud,” the little girl said.
“Marie, please,” her father said next.
“Come with me,” Marie said, and took them back into their room. “Now, you need to sleep, and be good.” She tucked them both in, and then sat for a moment on the edge of her brother’s bed. Then she heard it. Then another one followed the first. She got up and went to the window and stood in front of it in silence, holding her breath so not to smother the noise of the next one.
She opened the window to the warm night. She stood listening, while her brother and sister stayed in their beds.
Marie’s mother left the room next. Marc listened to the radio with Marie’s father, his attention utterly absorbed by the reports.
“Un moment, un moment,” Marie’s father said to Marc as he left the room, but Marc barely noticed as he stared into the frogeye tube of the radio panel. After a few minutes, Marc awoke from his trance of radio reports, realizing he was alone in the room.
Marc listened for their speaking. He heard nothing but the warm voice of the radio. He stood up and walked down the hallway toward the open door to the children’s room. Marie stood at the window with her father. Her mother sat with her little sister on the bed. No one spoke. Marc walked into the room toward the window to try and get a glimpse of what they were looking at down on the street. Then he heard them. They were soft and distant, like the muffled backfires of a car. A louder and closer one snapped his ears to attention. The shelling just northeast of the city softly drowned out all other sounds, including the frantic radio reports.
When Marc left that night for his flat, the streets were alive with people packing cars. A couple argued about getting money before the Germans took over the banks. In the Metro, no one spoke. It seemed to Marc that the air had been removed from all of Paris. People lined the floor of Marc’s station to sleep that night in fear of the approaching bombs.
Chapter 14
June 3, 1940
Paris, France
Bullitt was at a meeting, and Marc was at the embassy speaking with a frantic Belgian woman who claimed to have an American brother in New York. Marc doubted the story, but was sympathetic to her desperation to leave France. He noticed that the father stayed outside while she pleaded for a visa, and that her husband looked like a traditional Orthodox Jew.
The sirens then began to blare in the streets and a man came running into the embassy, yelling in French to get underground to the basement.
At first, Marc thought the man was overreacting, but when another woman came running across the street and entered the building, he could hear the drone of the planes. Before he had another moment to think, the blasting of the anti-aircraft guns began throughout the city.
The entire staff and all the people waiting rushed to the basement. Marc gave his gas mask to the daughter of the woman from Belgium, and helped the father try and put it over her face as she screamed and fought off the mask. Everyone then looked up at once as the shock wave of a bomb could be felt, even in the basement of the building.
June 3, 1940
Gibraltar, United Kingdom
David sat on his cot in the first-class lounge. The ship had been s
topped in Gibraltar for hours. Larry had gone out for a smoke along the deck as the ship rocked gently back and forth in the calm seas. His son, Robert, sat with his little sister, Majdouline. Margarette asked the steward how much longer the ship would be waiting before they were allowed to pass.
Majdouline then asked, “Is it time yet?” Her voice broke just over a half whisper.
“No, it is not time yet.” Then Margarette asked another question of the steward.
“Mum, is it time yet?” she demanded a little louder in French.
“Majdouline, what do you want?” And then Margarette bent down to listen to her whisper in her ear. “No, no, of course not. Robert, will you get your sister a little book to read from the library?”
Outside on the deck, leaning against the rail, Larry asked another man next to him, “When do you think they will be done with this inspection?”
“I hope soon. The British are being absurd Asses, if you ask me,” the man grumbled.
Two officers walked past them and the other passengers on the deck heading aft.
“I hope they are going to start the engines,” Larry said, unsure if the man had heard him.
“But Mommy, I can’t read,” little Majdouline complained as she sat on the cot inside the lounge.
“Robert, will you read it please?” Margarette stood. “I will be right back. I am going to find your father.” She walked into the main foyer outside the lounge and spotted David coming in from the promenade deck.
“David, have you seen Larry?” she asked him, looking around.
“Yes, he is on the other side, through those doors.” He pointed to the starboard side doors from the foyer.
“Can you go sit with the kids for a minute? They are getting antsy. I need to get Larry,” she asked. David went back into the lounge.
As David sat on his cot, Robert said, “The Tale of Tom Kitten. Look, Maji, see the kitten with the blue shorts and jacket?” She looked at the front of the book and smiled.
Outside on the deck, Margarette looked up and down for any sign of her husband. She then recognized his jacket from behind as he leaned over the rail.
“Larry, can you take Majdouline for a walk?” she asked.
“Why, what is wrong?” he looked through the windows of the lounge.
“She just needs to get out a bit and I think she will calm down with you taking her,” she continued.
“Is she upset?”
“Yes, she is picking up on how tense everyone is waiting here. I think if you take her, she will do better.”
The afternoon sun filled the large lounge. Most of the chairs and tables had been moved to the sides of the room. Passengers sat in small groups talking or playing cards. Life jackets served as pillows on most of the cots.
“See, Tom Kitten is too fat for his suit and needs more buttons,” Robert said. His little sister laughed.
“Read me more, Robert,” she asked him, seeming relaxed.
“I will be right in. Let me finish my smoke,” Larry said, looking down the deck where the officers had entered just a moment prior.
“Mr. Drake Puddle-duck has Tom’s clothes, Maji. See?” Robert said as she giggled.
Margarette stepped back into the lounge through the doors of the foyer. David rose from the cot and walked over to meet her.
“How is she doing?” Margarette asked.
“Fine, fine. They have been reading and she is laughing. You worry too much. Did you sleep well last night?”
“No, of course not. Did you?” she asked.
“Well, not exactly, but tonight should be better,” David answered, looking out through the windows.
Robert paged through the book, carefully showing each small illustration to his sister.
“See, look, Maji,” Robert said. Robert then turned to the last page of the book.
“The clothes all came off directly in the pond, because there were no buttons, and Mr. Drake Puddle-duck and Jemima and Rebeccah have been looking for them ever since. See, look, Maji.” He held up the book for his sister. Her smile fell away and she stared intensely at the page. She started to cry and then took the life jacket from underneath her cot and started to put it on.
“What are you doing?” Robert asked.
“What’s wrong?” Margarette demanded as she rushed over from the doors. “Majdouline, what is wrong?”
“I am not stupid. I am not going to lose my clothes,” she cried as she struggled with the jacket.
“What did you say to her?” Margarette turned to Robert.
“Nothing, I just read her the book. See?” He turned the pages.
“Majdouline, dear, no one is going to lose their clothes. Calm down, please, for mommy,” Margarette pleaded, trying not to be overheard.
“What is wrong with that little girl over there?” a man turned to the woman sitting next to her on a cot.
“I don’t know, but she is upset,” the woman peered over.
“Are they putting on their life jackets?” he asked as he took his vest from the front of his cot.
“I bet they have seen a U-boat. You know, I saw one myself this morning,” the woman said, pulling her jacket out from under the cot.
“Good idea,” another woman said as she pulled on her vest.
“Maji, nothing is wrong. Calm down, please,” Robert pleaded quietly and looked through the room. He then whispered, “You are frightening the others. Please behave.”
“Daddy is going to take you for a walk,” Margarette said, forcing a smile.
Larry began to pull himself away from his conversation with the other passenger and turned toward the foyer entrance.
“We got lucky, I suppose, to get to Genoa in time. Ventimiglia was a riot and, had it not been for our American passports, I don’t think we would’ve made it,” Larry said.
“I sure hope we get going soon. We’re sitting ducks out here,” the man said, looking out over the afternoon sea.
“Well, I need to take my daughter for a walk,” Larry said. His eye caught a man leaving the foyer with a life jacket on, followed by a second person wearing a vest. He dropped his lit cigarette and made for the door.
“David, will you get Larry for me?” Margarette turned to David as she tried to stop Majdouline from crying.
“Why is your life jacket on?” Larry asked a fourth passenger he caught leaving the lounge.
“U-boats. They saw a U-boat,” the older man said. Larry nearly knocked David over as he came through the lounge door.
“Larry, will you …” Margarette stopped as she saw his face.
“Get the jackets on. There is a U-boat,” Larry said, with no attempt to protect Robert or Majdouline from hearing him. His words snapped through the lounge like a bullet. They each quickly donned jackets and then left the lounge, followed by many others. Passengers gathered on the boat deck, searching the afternoon sea for some hint of what was to come next.
The two officers returned to the bridge after their inspection, each wearing a life jacket.
“Take those off. You are going to frighten the passengers,” the captain barked as he emerged from the navigation room.
“We thought you ordered it.” The officers looked at one another and then back at the captain. “They told us we have seen a U-boat.” The captain’s face turned red with a grimace and expression of disgust. He took a few deep breaths and then took the microphone. “Request permission to leave now. U-boat.” He then looked out over the bridge and started to walk back to the navigation room but stopped. He turned and picked up his pace toward the radio room.
“Yes, that is correct. Can you advise us how much longer?” the radio room officer said to the British officer on the other end. Just then, the captain took the transmitter from his hand and hit the button.
“Five minutes more. Starting engines in five minutes. We have a U-boat in the area,” and then silence.
“Sir, there is no U-boat. I have not been advised of any U—” Then the sound stopped as the captain h
it the mic again.
“You can keep the fucking mail. We don’t need it if you are going to let us take a hit like some goddamn sitting duck,” followed by total silence on the other end.
“Over on the port side,” one passenger said to another.
“Really?” the man asked the other man passing to the starboard deck.
“I saw it myself, just missed us,” the woman said with a confident snort.
“Do you think …?” Margarette looked up at David.
“Think what?”
“Well, that there really is a U-boat.”
“Probably not,” David said, glancing back and forth over the passengers, “but I have to believe there must have been something. Otherwise, the crew would be calming everyone down.”
Robert held Maji’s hand, and the Puddle-ducks of The Tale of Tom Kitten rested face down on the cot, alone in the lounge.
Chapter 15
June 3, 1940
Paris, France
Marc decided to walk home instead of taking the Metro. He approached one of the main boulevards that led from the east train station. All along the road, people carried whatever baggage they could manage. A few were injured. Marc stood on the side of the street and watched as they passed. At first he was going to cross over, but then decided to join the crowd and walk for a bit.
He knew after a few moments where they were going. He could overhear them speaking among themselves in French or Dutch. After crossing the Seine, and walking a few more blocks, Marc briefly lost track of time. It had not been long, maybe only twenty minutes or so.
The crowds grew denser. There was less room to walk on the sidewalks or even the street. In another block, he could see the façade of the station in front of him. He did not walk any further, and instead turned around.
He walked against the crowds coming down the street, turning his back to the south train station with a horde of people before it. A herd of goats being led by a peasant farmer did not faze him, because livestock had now become common in Paris.