That afternoon he tracked down her desk, a solitary rosebud in hand, the bloom pinched from a bouquet his superior officer’s wife had brought that morning to brighten her husband’s office. The clatter of typewriters hushed just barely as he introduced himself to the girl.
“I’m Devon Whitaker.”
“Patricia Wales, but my friends call me Trish.” She offered her hand and he kept it in his.
“Then we shall be friends, shan’t we, Trish.” His shy but knowledgeable grin had won many hearts, but there was more to it this time than just plotting to bed another beauty.
Trish removed her hand from his. “Time will tell, I suppose.” She glanced right and left at her friends, who feigned disinterest as their fingers worked the typewriter keys. Her best friend Dottie couldn’t muffle a giggle.
Devon acknowledged the friend with a conspiratorial smile and continued unabashed. “Sadly, that does present us with a problem. Time is precious in a country at war, so we really must move things along more quickly, don’t you think? Do have dinner with me tonight.”
“Thank you, but I’ve plans already. Perhaps another time?”
“Top-notch idea, my dear—we shall move those evening plans of yours to another time, and we dine together tonight—just the two of us—and become better acquainted, right?”
She laughed at his presumption, loving every minute of it. “So, I should simply give in to every pushy young gent I’ve only just met?”
“Ah, but that’s a different matter, you see. It’s you who manipulates me. That first smile this morning did the trick.”
She couldn’t help but give him another. “Have you plans for that rose you’re torturing—or could it be for some other girl here in the steno pool?”
Devon looked at the mangled stem in his hands. He handed it to her with both hands and a deep bow, a knight offering his sword to a queen. “For you alone, Trish.”
Happily resigned to her fate, she jotted down her phone number and address, handing him the note with another smile. “Eight tonight, then?”
After dinner they’d taken in Ivor Novello’s much-admired “The Dancing Years” in the West End. When the air raid sirens wailed and everyone rushed to the shelters, they ignored the perturbed wardens and hid instead behind a large velvet couch in the lobby, smothering their laughter to avoid discovery. The crump of German bombs shook the building and rattled windows, and anti-aircraft fire responded in the distance. Later at the door to her flat she came into his arms. Roommate, she explained, otherwise he might join her for a nightcap. A few long kisses and he was gone, only to see her almost every night for a month before he proposed. And Trish accepted by covering his face with carmine kisses.
His departure was filled with tears, for he couldn’t speak of where he was going and what he was facing, only that he would be out of country and not able to write for some time. And that he would be safe. Only the first part had proven true.
SOE—Special Operations, Executive—had dropped him into the moonless sky over Occupied France with a wireless set, entrenching tool, pistol and false identity papers. And, of course, a potassium cyanide pill hiding in the rollup cuff of the worker’s trousers beneath his jump suit.
The landing should have been easy. He had practiced extensively, first screwing up his courage and jumping from balloons at ever increasing height, then tumbling from aircraft by day and night and feeling the upward jerk as his parachute deployed, watching the ground rush up, enjoying the thrill of the moment, and anxiously anticipating doing an important job to help win the war.
The terrain was well chosen for his drop, a level field with a nearby hay barn and a few distant farmhouses. The plane had crossed over his beloved Brittany avoiding Luftwaffe patrols, and kept to very low altitude as it moved into the Loire region. The drop came well after the midnight hour so that few might look skyward and see his chute, and his landing target lay some distance from any urban areas protected by flak guns and spotters. And yet, nothing had gone as planned.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gurs, Vichy France
13 August 1941
The stench assailed him as he neared the gates. Three guards idled at the entrance to the Gurs camp, apparently immune to the sour smell of unwashed humanity and raw sewage, to the reek of despair. He read only boredom on their faces, no curiosity at the approach of a visitor reporting to the guard shack under a stifling, late summer sun. Ryan was just one more tiresome petitioner on behalf of some wasted soul trapped behind the barbed wire.
“Vous voulez, monsieur?” Unlike his subordinates, the officer-in-charge standing tall in his police uniform.
“I’m here for the release of three detainees.” He pulled the portfolio from his pocket. “And here are the required forms.” Ryan handed over the letters one by one, citing each name affixed at the top—Erika Breitling von Kredow, Leonhard von Kredow, René Gesslinger. The officer appeared momentarily surprised by Ryan’s faultless German on the heels of educated French. “Votre carte d’identité, monsieur?” Ryan obliged.
The policeman’s curiosity turned to disdain. He returned the American passport and directed his attention to the letters in hand, carefully scanning each in turn. Stepping back into the guard shack, he sat behind a desk to compare the names against a ledger showing line after line of prisoner identities. He reached for the phone.
Standing outside the gate, Ryan stared nervously into the camp, hoping for an early glimpse of his friends. The last twenty-four hours had been especially difficult for him. He knew his undertaking was near completion, but regretted having no means to alert his friends of their imminent release. Now he would finally fulfill a promise made to Erika nearly three years earlier when all had seemed lost. Ed had managed to obtain American visas for all three, and for the hundredth time Ryan felt for those documents, still tucked safely in the jacket he held in his arm.
Into the distance stretched a central street bordered by block after block of identical barracks numbering in the hundreds, each îlot of thirty or so separated by barbed wire stretched along wooden posts buried in the heavy clay soil. Barbed fencing about as high as a man surrounded the huge settlement. The ground was rutted and hard, evidence that during the winter months it had been a morass of mud. The individual barracks were uniformly covered in thin wooden planking and frayed, tarred fabric. There were no windows.
The officer returned to the doorway. “Tomorrow.”
“Why tomorrow? I’m here, they’re here, and my papers are in order.” The last thing Ryan needed now was another delay.
“We need time to process the paperwork.”
“What paperwork do you need? You hold the required forms, so you’ve no reason to wait. I take three detainees off your hands and we’re on our way.” Ryan tucked a wad of tightly-rolled currency into the officer’s breast-pocket flap. “Simple as that.”
“Procedures must be followed, and for the moment I can’t spare the personnel.” He pushed the bills farther into his pocket before stepping back into the shack. “Tomorrow at noon.”
The small town nearby had little to recommend it. Ryan took a dingy room at the only local inn, reached by a creaking external staircase and surely infested with bedbugs and lice. The frustration in having to wait almost twenty-four hours before reuniting with his friends gnawed at him. After stowing his bag he wandered down to a tavern to while away the afternoon over a beer and the local paper. A small shop actually displayed bread, produce and dairy products with no line of hopeful buyers out front. Unlike Paris and even Vichy itself, this region of southwestern France was not suffering the same degree of economic hardship as farther north.
The tavern was nearly empty. A middle-aged man sat alone, his peasant garb patched and stained, a red beret angled on his head, and an unlit pipe perched between his lips. He faced a water glass and some cloudy liqueur, pastis perhaps. He appeared to doze. In the opposite corner a bedraggled couple waited with infinite patience, rarely uttering a word while staring
vacantly out the window much of the time. Perhaps they too were hoping to see someone in the camp and had been shoved off until the next day. Ryan considered whether he should have offered a larger bribe. Between the couple sat a plate holding slices of bread and a single fatty sausage already reduced to bite-sized slices. A dollop of brownish mustard left a smear across the plate. From time to time the man speared a piece of meat with his fork, raked it through the mustard, then chewed industriously to extract every last bit of flavor. The woman seemed content to nibble on a slice of bread.
Ryan’s beer arrived and he used his handkerchief to wipe the smudged rim. He thought the glass might have escaped a final rinse in a seldom-changed dishpan. The bartender was a stiff-backed woman, her hair bound tightly in a bun, her arms bony to the point of malnourishment, and her whole body shrinking beneath a stained apron touching her shoes. Obviously put off by Ryan’s odd fastidiousness, she demanded immediate payment. Ryan obliged. After emptying the glass and exhausting the local newspaper, Ryan decided to return to his room. As he got to his feet, two camp guards entered the inn and seated themselves at his table.
“You’re not a local, monsieur.” Ryan’s clean-cut American suit did appear out of place in these surroundings.
“And certainly not French either,” the other added.
“Is that a concern, messieurs?” Ryan‘s eyes narrowed.
“Pas du tout, monsieur. We can only assume our fine detention facility brings you to Gurs.” Both guards laughed as they signaled the bartender, who brought them beer in glasses no cleaner than Ryan’s had been.
At least I’m not getting any special treatment, he thought.
Ryan relaxed and laughed along. “Regrettably, I must wait until tomorrow to see my friends inside.”
The older guard glanced at his partner, who nodded before continuing quietly: “That’s not always the case, monsieur. There are ways to gain immediate access…less formal ways, shall we say?” He rubbed an imaginary coin between his fingers and laughed again.
“That might interest me.” Ryan sat again in the chair just vacated.
“And how many friends do you wish to visit?”
“A German couple about my age and a small boy. You know them?”
“Our camp is large. We have many couples and many small boys.”
“And a fair number of German Jews.” The younger guard interrupted, barely suppressing his grin. “Can we throw in a few displaced Spanish Republicans, as well?” Ryan remembered that the camp had originally housed refugees from Franco. Apparently a few still remained.
The older guard ignored his colleague’s jest. “Give me some names and we’ll see what can be done to speed things up for you.”
Ryan wrote on a corner torn from his newspaper and slid it across the table.
“Five hundred francs per head,” said the older man, regarding the list.
Ryan pulled out his wallet and placed three bills on the newsprint.
“Did I say five hundred? My apologies, monsieur. I misspoke. I meant a thousand francs each.” He winked at his colleague.
Ryan pulled out the additional notes and added a hundred francs for good measure.
The money and names disappeared into the pocket of the guard. “Wait right here—this could take a while.” They downed their beers in one long draught, rose from the table to salute the bartender good-naturedly, and gave a mocking little bow to the American before they left the bar, laughing at some private joke.
Ryan nursed another beer while awaiting their return. By dinnertime he knew he’d been had. He ordered a bowl of pea soup, sausage and a bread roll. He didn’t want to go to bed hungry, knowing the vermin he’d face in his room would make sleep difficult anyway. The bartender demanded money for the guards’ unpaid beers, so he coughed up the additional cash. Back in his room, he opened both windows to draw in a bit of air and prepared for what would likely be a restless night. Noon tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.
Under the searing midday sun the ramshackle buildings seem to tremble in the thick air. The walls showed obvious makeshift efforts to cover holes in the fabric siding with whatever had proved handy, and the open areas between barbed wire runs and camp structures were rutted, dusty and weedy. A washroom platform with a long trough separated the two closest buildings, and Ryan spotted other similar structures farther down the rows. No running water was apparent, and toilet facilities consisted of trough latrines and raised platforms with collection tubs for catching excrement.
Prisoners gathered alongside the structures seeking shade under the eaves. Surely the heat inside the cramped barracks would be intolerable. Makeshift fans of scrap cardboard moved lethargically in many hands, fighting a losing battle against the miserable day. Occasionally heads bent close to share a word, but no murmur came from the crowd as would be expected with a gathering of this size. Instead, the air hummed with the incessant buzz of insects, and he could see internees swatting the pests. A group of children played listlessly with an old bicycle rim, its tire long gone, but they too seemed strangely quiet.
Ryan scanned the faces of the malnourished children, wondering if one might be six-year-old Leo. Guilt overcame him in the face of so much misery. He would only be able to help three, while so many others waited in vain for rescue. But I can only do what I can.
A few prisoners stared through the barbed wire to the distant woods and fields, shoulders hunched, alone in their thoughts. He looked from face to face, from one gaunt figure to the next, and wondered what changes he would find in his friends, how severe the toll of their past years.
He glanced back into the guard shack and observed the same senior officer from the previous day, now once again on the phone. The man saw Ryan and offered a nod, then set down the receiver and gestured to the younger guard at the door. He had seen nothing of the two men who had fleeced him of thirty-one hundred francs the previous afternoon. Plus the two beers.
“Take him in, block B, barrack 15.”
The gate swung open, and Ryan and the guard walked a gauntlet of listless prisoners before entering one of the passages between two rows of buildings. Women tended cooking pots on portable burners set in the broiling sun, and male cooks in dirty aprons prepared to butcher a small pig carcass. He smelled soup of some kind.
The internees observed his progress, hollow eyes tracking, curious to see a well-dressed stranger enter their closed world of neglect and decay. Any break in the tedium was welcome. “Help us, monsieur, please?” a plaintive request from an old woman, followed quickly by another plea for help from the opposite side of their path. He felt shame for his freedom, for his own health, and his helplessness in the face of such despair.
“Silence!” ordered the guard. “Come, monsieur, vite, vite!” The policeman pushed forward quickly now as some of the prisoners threatened to approach. One hand went to the truncheon on his belt. He appeared anxious to escape the searing sun and gathering crowd.
Ryan’s own pace had slowed as he considered how his own life was once again about to change direction.
Every minute was tedious, every hour unending, each day relentless, and a week, oh God, an eternity. René slumped down in the face of such deadly heat and boredom, rubbing his aching knee.
Life back in Alsace had been so easy. Just ten kilometers south of Colmar, a private road led visitors past the family’s thriving vineyards and perfectly-kept bottling barn to reach the lovely two-storied family home of half-timbers, stucco, and steep red-tiled roof. Leaving all that behind had been a serious blow, perhaps worse than abandoning Kehl and the family shipping business in those final disastrous hours under SS attack. For a fleeting second René thought of Ryan, wondering once again if his friend could have survived the night in the Rhine. He supposed not. No word had ever reached them despite the letters René had sent to Washington for so long.
“What I wouldn’t give for a glass of chilled pinot blanc right now.” René wiped sweat from his neck and brow and extended his legs. The ancient
wooden chair creaked beneath his large frame.
“You say something, Liebling?”
“Nothing important, just remembering Colmar…and how happy mother was there.”
Jeanne had beamed at returning to the town of her birth and her familial home. The abandonment of her mansion on the Rhine and the pre-dawn river crossing to France had shaken her badly. René had waited until safely in Strasbourg before phoning Charles Rothe and requesting he come to the train station to bring them to Colmar. With affection and relief Jeanne had greeted the family who ran the vintner operation left by her parents, and the Rothes in turn treated the silver-haired grande dame with a respect bordering on adulation.
“The Rothes are such sweet, caring people.” Erika’s look mirrored his melancholy. “They treated us all like family.”
“I do hope they made it safely away.” The extent of their concern went unspoken. René had tried to reach the vineyard manager several times in the past year. An unrecognized voice answered each time. Fearing a wiretap, he’d immediately hung up. With Alsace now part of the Third Reich, there was little expectation the family had been left alone, given the Gesslinger taint.
Leaving that beautiful home and its warm memories for unknown Lyon had been very hard on his mother, and each subsequent move had taken a further toll. “I realize how little the thought helps, but at least your mother’s finally safe with Brigitte over at the Morlanne farm now.” Erika offered a hopeful smile. “One less thing to worry about, right?”
René only nodded. He had no shortage of worries and was sure the next blow would come soon. The situation in France for Jewish and political refugees from Hitler’s Germany had deteriorated rapidly. The influx of Jews only heightened an inherent distrust of foreigners among the French populace. The country had its own long tradition of anti-Semitism. The newcomers flooding over the borders were not just Germans, they were German Jews. Internment camps across the country swallowed up the newly homeless, offering only disease-ridden squalor and neglect.
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