by Nancy Wake
O’Leary was waiting for me on the platform as the train pulled into Toulouse. I just had time to give him details of the last two days and he decided to accompany me to Mauzac the following week. As bad luck would have it, the escape had to be temporarily postponed as the guards had been changed at the camp and a different type of uniform was required. Then to make matters worse, the French Fleet was scuttled in Toulon on 27 November. The Germans were furious and tightened up the regulations, which made travelling more dangerous. Altogether it was a depressing and frustrating time, a combination which sometimes leads to mistakes made through sheer impatience.
O’Leary procured the new uniform. The guard smuggled it into the camp and hid it in a lavatory. On 8 December Garrow put it on and marched out at the changing of the guard. A car was waiting for him nearby and he was whisked away to Toulouse. After recuperating and being prepared for the arduous trek over the Pyrenees he finally arrived safely back in England.
To assist in Garrow’s escape, O’Leary had picked three men. One was his wireless operator, Tom Groome, who had recently arrived from London. Tom was tall and good-looking and completely bilingual. His mother was French and his father Australian.
Several weeks after Garrow’s escape, Tom and his assistant, a young French girl, were arrested by the Gestapo as Tom was tapping out a message to London. They were both escorted to the second floor of the Gestapo Headquarters in Toulouse. Tom obviously decided that the risk of death was preferable to torture, so he careered across the room and jumped through the closed windows. He managed to run some distance and found a hiding place in a little passageway, but unfortunately a man who’d seen the escape denounced him and he was recaptured.
In the meantime his assistant showed great presence of mind during the commotion. She walked quietly out the front door of the Gestapo Headquarters and alerted the organisation.
Tom Groome’s courage was an inspiration to all of us. I didn’t see him again until he and O’Leary came back from Dachau in 1945. Tom has never told me any details of the treatment he received at the hands of the Germans, but I’ve read many gruesome reports, and can only too well imagine it.
As for me, after Garrow’s escape I made sure I was seen all over Marseille by dozens of people for more than a week.
Some days later a gendarme called at our home to inform me that my cousin had escaped from Mauzac. First of all I expressed doubt, then joy, and after offering him a drink, which he accepted, I rang Henri to give him the good news. Once again I acted my part out to the full. If, as we suspected, the Gestapo tapped our telephone, what could be more natural than Madame Fiocca happily telling her husband that her cousin was on his way home?
It was with mixed feelings that I agreed to undertake a quick trip to Paris for Xavier. The papers I travelled on would be near perfect. Frank arranged for me to stay with a close friend of his, an industrial chemist, and Xavier organised a look-out on each side of the demarcation line to check that I passed the controls safely. But why was I going to Paris? What was my cover story? I was not foolish enough to believe that the frivolous replies I gave the Vichy police in the Unoccupied Zone would deter the German police from interrogating me thoroughly if the occasion arose. I’d already heard that the Germans were looking for a mysterious woman they called ‘The White Mouse’, and I knew it was me.
So Henri organised a business trip to Toulon where we called in at Frank’s busy chemist’s shop. We had time to order most of his stock before we could catch him on his own. Xavier ‘happened’ to wander in to buy a tube of toothpaste and the four of us ‘happened’ to meet at our friendly fisherman’s bistro for an aperitif. In peacetime this may appear to be a complicated travelling scheme, but in those days, especially in 1942, every angle, every detail, had to be carefully studied. One always had to have a feasible explanation ready for every single action in case the police were, or became, interested in any person with whom we were seen. For instance, Henri was on business in Toulon. I was on my way to Nice but had broken my journey to have lunch with him. We went to the chemist to buy some item I had forgotten. Xavier needed toothpaste and Frank went to have a drink.
After lunch, during which time we discussed our problems, I continued on to Nice where I had an appointment with our doctor friend from the Alps. As a doctor and the mayor of his village he had a special permit to travel by car. He came to my rescue and suggested a perfectly valid reason for my trip.
My false identity card would state I was French, born in Grasse (the perfume town) and single, and that official perfume business necessitated the journey. This would satisfy a routine inspection by the Vichy or German police but would be useless if I encountered any trouble. In the meantime we were going to try and reserve a room for me at a hotel in Paris for ten days—a red herring.
I was to start my journey at Grasse, where I supposedly lived, taking the precaution of keeping my bus ticket in my pocket. If I arrived in Paris without a mishap I would proceed to the apartment where I was expected and two days later return to the Midi in the same manner, but with an entirely different identity card. This precaution was in case the same inspectors might be controlling and notice I had only remained in Paris two days.
Back in Marseille I bamboozled my friends by saying I was going to the Alps to fetch some meat and game. I never failed to bring back food when I went on a trip. We gave some to close friends if there was enough, otherwise we invited them for a meal.
To protect Henri I wrote him a touching letter saying I could not bear life in Marseille any longer and I was leaving him. This was in case I got trapped in Paris. As it happened everything went according to plan. I took the bus from Grasse and caught the Paris express at Cannes. The only scare I had was when the Paris train pulled in to Marseille. The so-called King of Marseille, a well-known gangster, boarded the train. Fortunately he was in another wagon-lit and that was the first and last I saw of him. We were hours late arriving in Paris. The Resistance in the north were making train travel precarious.
I made my way to the address I had been given. No one answered the door when I rang. I had been pre-warned about a certain danger signal in the way the doormat was placed. I looked carefully; it was not there, so I rang the bell again. Still there was no answer. I rang again and knocked at the same time, whereupon the neighbour came out of the adjacent flat and said he would bang on the common wall. Sure enough, my host opened the door, greeted me and led me inside.
It was an old apartment with enormous rooms, high ceilings and wide windows, and bitterly cold. We went into the drawing-room which seemed to be in the centre of the apartment and there in the middle of the room, built on top of a beautiful Persian carpet, was a little wooden hut. I thought I would die laughing. They had everything inside except the kitchen sink. A radio, two sleeping-bags, two small armchairs, a storm lantern, candles, books, writing materials, a little kerosene stove with the coffee pot on top, glasses and pousse-café. This was where they spent the cold nights. They had central heating but no fuel. They slept in their hut—I slept in a huge bedroom which was freezing, but I was at least as safe as one could expect to be in Paris.
They were wonderful people who went out of their way to make me feel at home. As soon as I had concluded the business which had brought me to Paris my hostess and I walked around their quartier, looking like two housewives with our string bags. I did not like what I saw, as I had known a different Paris. It depressed me to see the German uniforms, the swastikas flying high over that beautiful city. Propaganda posters everywhere, the collaborators enjoying their life of luxury and special favours, the beautifully dressed women consorting with the enemy, but more depressing still was the look of resignation and quiet despair visible on so many faces.
The journey back to the Midi was uneventful. Henri, Xavier and Frank were all relieved to see me. Xavier said he would never forget the service I had rendered his organisation, and I am sure he meant it.
Christmas was not far away and Germans or no Ger
mans I was determined to collect my half of the pig. I ordered a perfectly lovely ski outfit and off I went to our chalet, which was in the middle of snow country. Four young Frenchmen who were avoiding the Vichy police travelled with me. They had been ordered to Germany to work in a factory and were hoping to find a hiding place in the mountains. The train was very late arriving at Briançon, by now over-run with Germans and a few Italians. We just had enough time to catch our bus to Nevache. I went straight to the farmer’s house in the village while the men went cautiously to the chalet, hiding in the woodshed until I arrived.
To my delight the pig weighed about 136 kilos. He had obviously enjoyed our home-grown potatoes. The farmer killed him and cut him in half. It was a bloody sight to witness but not nearly as bad as an experience I had the year before.
I had bought a little pig on the black market. I am sure the man said he would kill it for me, but he didn’t. It was round about the time Henri mentioned quite wistfully he wished he could find me alone sometimes—there always seemed to be men in our house. The very next day when I was walking down the Canebière I was introduced to two English girls who had arrived in Marseille from an enforced residence in a little village, hoping to get a train to Portugal. They did not have a lot of money so I took them home for lunch. For once Henri wouldn’t find me surrounded by men. I rang him up and told him not to be late home. I used to do this if we had anything special that would spoil if the gas supply broke down. He was home on the dot of twelve, expecting some delicious treat. Instead I took him into the bar and said, ‘Look, girls for a change.’ He never complained about the men after that. At least he didn’t have to take them with him everywhere we went.
Soon after, having ordered a dead pig, I came home to find Claire in tears with a live pig tied up to the kitchen table. I phoned my butcher but he couldn’t leave his shop as it was meat ration day. The pig was making a terrible noise and I was afraid the commissioner of police opposite would hear him and report me because, after all, this was illegal. I went down to the bar on the corner and the owner advised me to hit it on the head with a hammer, then slit its throat. As for me slitting pigs’ throats, my education had been sadly neglected. I rang the poor butcher again and he gave me a few instructions.
Claire hit the pig on the head, but not hard enough. I slit its throat, but not deep enough. The pig careered around the kitchen screaming. What pig wouldn’t? We were covered in blood. There was blood on the floor, the walls and even the ceiling. Finally I picked up the hammer, gave the pig a mighty wallop and knocked it out.
It was almost time for Henri to come home so I raced into the bathroom to shower and change my clothes, leaving Claire and the corpse in the kitchen with the door closed.
In came Henri, and he walked straight through to the kitchen once he discovered we had forgotten to fill the ice-bucket. I shouted out, ‘Don’t go in there.’ He replied, ‘Why not? Are there men or women in there this time?’ I said, ‘No, a dead pig.’ He told me not to be so funny and opened the door. His face was a picture as he looked at the mess. Then he looked at me and said with mock sadness, ‘Nannie, how is it that with all the women I could have married I chose you?’
Fortunately our butcher arrived when he had finished serving his customers. He cleaned up the mess and cut up the pig, and when it was all over Henri used to delight in recounting the story. One day he saw a notice outside the abattoirs—‘Men Wanted’; he sent me a copy by special messenger, attaching a reference.
The pig in Nevache, however, which died at the hands of a professional, was cut up perfectly and laid to rest in a large suitcase.
I had intended taking the bus back to Briançon but the gendarme and the mayor warned me the Germans in Briançon had been making enquiries about a young woman who had taken the Nevache bus. Once more the search was on for ‘The White Mouse’. As I was the only non-local woman to have come to Nevache there was every chance I was the person they were interested in. Fortunately the villagers thought it was because of my black-market pig and they were determined it would not fall into the hands of the enemy. They were unaware of my male companions, or of anything to do with my double life.
The four men managed to disguise themselves to look like farmers going to market and caught the bus after it left the village. My suitcases, the pig in one of them, were hidden in the back of the bus and I borrowed some skis and joined the bus half way down the mountain, just pass the regular German checkpoint. The Germans coming up from the garrison inspected the bus as it passed but they continued up the mountain road when there was no sign of a female passenger. The five of us left the bus before arriving at Briançon and hired a gazogène taxi to take us to Veynes, where we boarded the Grenoble–Marseille express.
By the time I settled into my compartment I was exhausted but the thought of the suitcase full of pig up on the luggage rack cheered me up considerably. But not for long. The ticket inspector told me that he had heard there was a curfew in Marseille. Now Henri would not be able to meet me. And what could I do with the four men sitting in different compartments?
At Aix-en-Provence, the last station before Marseille, a youngish civilian joined me in my compartment. He kept eyeing me up and down and started talking about the weather. I suspected he was German although he spoke perfect French without a trace of a local dialect. By this time the curfew in Marseille had been confirmed and so had his nationality—he was German. When he admired my skiing outfit I decided to encourage him in a harmless flirtation. As we pulled into Marseille I accepted his invitation to meet again. The platform was swarming with all kinds of police, including the black-market specialists.
When I tried to pull the suitcase down from the rack he was a perfect gentleman and rushed to help me. It was so heavy he almost fell backwards. I took the smaller one and we started to walk towards the railway exit. The only trouble was he was listing heavily to one side. I begged him to carry it as if it was light, miming at the same time the way he should do so. As we reached the exit the police pounced on him, demanding to see his papers and the contents of the suitcase. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his special pass. He was a Gestapo officer. We made arrangements to meet in three days time. I do not know how long he waited.
Here I was on the Gare Saint-Charles with four ‘wanted’ Frenchmen and about 60 kilos of pig. Suddenly I remembered Ficetole’s brother-in-law. He worked at the Hôtel Terminus, which had an entrance from the inside of the station. Luckily he was on duty and he took the five of us, plus the pig, into an empty bedroom, where we could stay until early morning and the lifting of the curfew. It had been reserved for a German arriving on the morning train. We stretched out under the bed and although sleep was impossible, we were sheltered and felt reasonably safe. I knew Henri would be alerted as to my whereabouts and, sure enough, he was waiting outside the station in the morning. A young waiter on night duty had been detailed to whisk us out of our room via the hotel kitchen. The four men travelled on to Toulon and their next contact, while the pig and I drove home in Henri’s truck.
Naturally, all our friends in Marseille were anxious to have news of the pig and we arranged a terrific meal for the following Sunday. One of our guests was Marcel, a barman in a night-club. He was very anti-German and very helpful, behind the scenes, to the British and the Resistance. That night he was on duty at the club. Business was very quiet so he was chatting away with a German at the bar, and in the course of conversation happened to mention that he had eaten some excellent pork for lunch. When the German asked if it was black-market pig Marcel had to admit that it had not been purchased with ration cards. The German went on to say that he had carried a very heavy suitcase for an extremely charming French girl and that he felt sure that it had been full of black-market food. Jokingly he added that it might have been Marcel’s pork.
At that very minute I walked into the bar, followed by my husband and our luncheon guests. I, of course, was ignorant of the conversation that had taken place. I pretended I
didn’t see the German and headed for a table far away from the bar. Marcel knew that I had let a German carry my suitcase so he shut up immediately and pretended not to know me. We left after a couple of drinks. We didn’t want to get indigestion! We never found out what the German was doing in Marseille. He did not return to the night-club and I’m happy to say I never saw him again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Christmas was over. As we saw the New Year in I wondered what 1943 would bring. After a busy year I knew that in future, with the Germans occupying the Free Zone, I would have to tread warily.
The dreaded Milice was formed. It comprised a small army of vicious Frenchmen dedicated to ferreting out the members of the Resistance and slaughtering them. They were armed, being an auxiliary of the German Army, and authorised to kill. They were arrogant, savagely cruel, treacherous and sadistic. They had absolutely no compassion for any of their compatriots who did not support their beliefs. They were hated intensely—far more than the Germans were. I have known Milicians who have been just as violent as the most savage Gestapo agent. Unfortunately, too many of these low creatures escaped justice at the end of the war.
The Germans were taking the occupation of Marseille seriously. They were determined to destroy the old quarter lying behind the Town Hall, which was situated on the Vieux Port. It was a large area consisting of old residential buildings and a never-ending maze of narrow streets and passageways. It was possible to wander around it but a stranger would have been foolish to venture any further. The residents were a mixed bunch. There were brothels, prostitutes, pimps, black-marketeers, gangsters, forgers, people hiding from the Vichy police, refugees and some honest citizens whose families had lived there for years.
The Germans and their stooges organised a high-powered operation. Thousands of police were transferred from other cities and the whole area was cordoned off, then armed teams entered and cleared the area, arresting anyone suspicious. If the residents who had been given notice to evacuate had not done so, it was just too bad. They proceeded to destroy the old town.