It was the same wherever he went. At Merlebach in the Maginot Line, drunkenness among the troops was so rife that a railway terminal was being used as drying-out rooms - salles de desethylisation - to sober up the stupid poilus. Officers had no respect for their men and vice-versa - discipline was almost non-existent.
The British troops were having the time of their lives. By night, merry on ten francs' worth of wine, they sang the songs of their fathers' war - It's a long way to Tipperary and Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag - and by day they proposed to fight their fathers' war all over again, from trenches dug on the World War I pattern of six feet deep and four feet six inches wide.
Freddie was appalled. He had seen the slick German army on manoeuvres in 1938. He had written hundreds of column inches about Goering's Luftwaffe. In London he had button-holed politicians, badgered so-called experts, talked on the radio - and been given reassuring answers. After five weeks in France, Freddie felt like the only sighted man in the land of the blind.
General Gort refused to grant him an interview. Commander-in-Chief Maurice Gustave Gamelin had Freddie thrown out of French Army Headquarters. "Monsieur Mallon" was widely regarded as a troublemaking American journalist whose desire for sensational headlines should be stamped on. In Paris he was summoned to the American Embassy and told in blistering language that complaints had been made.
In despair Freddie searched for other reporters who might corroborate his reports. Paris cafes overflowed with newspapermen, few of whom had been to the Maginot Line.
"What's the point?" they said. "Nothing will happen up there. It's stalemate. The big story will break here when the diplomats dream up a peace formula. Besides ... Paris in the spring and all that... come on Freddie, have another drink."
Blazing with temper, Freddie set out to obtain proof of what he had seen in Metz, the shambling apology of an army parading in bare feet with firearms made in the last century. While Sean Connors listened to speeches in the House of Commons, Freddie was touring newspaper offices in search of a photographer. Not one single editor considered the story worthwhile. Finally Freddie found Andre Sagan, a free-lance photographer specialising in fashion work, who was willing to risk imprisonment for photographing military installations and equipment.
"You're safe on all counts," Freddie said in disgust. "What we're going to see can't be described as military or even an installation, and they haven't got equipment - that's the whole point!"
After some further haggling, Sagan agreed to make himself available the next day, complete with his Citroen - "But not until noon, I'm booked for a fashion show in the morning."
Freddie remained sober that night, though he was tempted to get drunk. Parisians seemed even less concerned about the war than Londoners. A friendly barman gave him the Parisian point of view. "Why should we fight? We are safe from invasion because of the Maginot Line. Should we fight for the Czechs? Or the Poles? Have you met a Pole? They are animals, ignorant, barely civilised."
Sagan's fashion show ran late the next day, and it was not until four in the afternoon that he was ready to begin the two hundred mile drive to Metz. "Perhaps we should leave it until the morning?" he suggested.
Freddie almost had a seizure. Finally Sagan agreed that they should drive as far as Rheims that evening. "That way," Freddie said sourly, "you might be on parade a little earlier in the morning."
They left Rheims at nine o'clock the next morning, and Freddie was on his way back to Metz, complete with a photographer who promised to swear an affidavit to whatever they witnessed. But not even Freddie was prepared for the sights of that day.
Sagan's Citroen never reached Metz. The roads were choked with traffic, mostly military, hurrying in all directions at once - and the ominous rumble of guns in the distance was unmistakable.
"Where are they holding the manoeuvres?" Sagan shouted to a young French officer.
"Manoeuvres? That's the start of the German offensive."
The Germans had launched a dawn attack in the Ardennes.
"The Ardennes," Sagan roared with laughter. "The Ardennes are impenetrable! Every schoolboy in France knows that." To him it was a joke. Only Germans would be so stupid. Marshal Petain himself had described the wooded heights of the Ardennes as "the best fortifications in Europe." Sagan wagged a finger under Freddie's nose. "That is why the Maginot Line was never extended beyond Sedan - there was no need."
But the guns had started. Freddie looked at the map on his knees. Sedan was on the Belgian frontier. If the Germans could get through the Ardennes they could swing south and be behind the Maginot Line.
The very suggestion made Sagan erupt with fresh laughter.
Even so, as they drove towards Sedan the boom of artillery grew louder. Sagan's amusement began to fade. Freddie grew more agitated with every mile. Progress was slow, columns of troops marched in ragged files towards the frontier, farm carts impeded army trucks, all was confusion. At Rethel they heard the first rumours. Fort Eben Emael, Belgium's much vaunted stronghold guarding the important city of Liege, had been captured by Germans using a new weapon. Sagan, interpreting rapid-fire French, fumbled for an English translation of gliders.
"Gliders?" Freddie echoed. "Gliders might even carry troops over your Maginot Line. Did you ever think of that?"
Sagan felt sure that someone in the French Army knew all about gliders.
Freddie scowled disbelief.
Five kilometres later, Sagan wanted to turn back. They pulled to the side of the road while they argued. Sagan stopped a farmer who had been in Sedan early that morning. The man knew nothing, just that the sound of the guns had become louder and louder, and that there were rumours of German troops pouring into Belgium.
"Through the Ardennes?" Sagan said in disbelief. The farmer shrugged and hurried away.
The road to the frontier was becoming more congested than ever. Sagan insisted that they return to Paris.
Freddie had no choice. Without a vehicle, and an interpreter, what else could he do?
It took them the rest of the day, stopping here and there along the route to beg the latest news from men clustered around wireless sets in open air cafes. Nothing was definite, every statement was contradicted five minutes later, nobody really knew what was happening.
By eleven-thirty that night, Freddie had toured the newspaper offices in Paris. What he heard was frightening. A reconnaissance pilot had flown over the Ardennes and seen blue ribbons of light winding for miles through the woods. The forest was alive with motorised convoys. Reports were reaching Paris of paratroops landing en masse all over Belgium ...
Seven days later Sean was still trying to cope with the stories coming out of France. The speed and ferocity of the German advance had been devastating. Sedan had cracked first, bombed into submission by endless waves of Dorniers and Heinkels. Five hundred pound bombs had ripped through solid concrete. French artillery pieces had been upended like toys. French soldiers had run away. And Rotterdam had been bombed into oblivion by a hundred tons of high explosives. Twenty-five thousand people had been incinerated in the flames and the debris. Holland had surrendered.
London was stunned. The Germans had simply ignored the Maginot Line - outflanked it through the Ardennes. Within seven days they had annihilated two French armies, gained a massive foothold in France and nullified the Allied strategic plan. Already the French First Army and the British Expeditionary Force were in retreat.
Sean's life had taken on a new pattern. Every evening he waited for Freddie to telephone from Paris. Sometimes he waited alone, although generally Val and Margaret were there, Margaret tense and anxious, hoping for a word with Freddie when he had finished with Sean. Usually the call came through at nine o'clock, but lines from Paris were so uncertain that it could be at any time.
That night it was at ten. Sean's pencil raced to keep up with Freddie's dictation, the American's voice fading in and out, sometimes lost entirely in a crackle of static.
After the report c
ame the personal news. Freddie had bought a car and was leaving Paris in the morning.
"So God knows when you'll next hear from me," Freddie said cheerfully. "I've got to get out of Paris. The gloom here is unbelievable. I tried to talk to Reynaud this afternoon and got the usual refusal, but I did see something. I was outside his office on the Quai d'Orsay, out in the corridor. They were burning their own files in the courtyard. Can you believe it? The French Foreign Office!"
"So where will you go?" Sean shouted.
"To find Gort's army ..." Freddie's voice faded and came back. "Amiens ... then on from there ..." crackle obliterated his voice again, "... try to call you, but some of the phones in these villages ..."
"Hello? Freddie? Are you still there?"
Static masked the reply before the line went dead. Sean rattled the receiver in anger. "Damn. Sorry, Margaret, but -"
"It's all right," she turned away. "How did he sound?"
"Fine, on top of the world," Sean coaxed his voice into confident tones. "You know Freddie when he's chasing a story. He said he's moving around so might not call tomorrow night."
"Oh?" She swung back to stare at him, searching his face.
"French telephones," he shrugged and grinned. "Sure now, aren't they even worse than in the auld country."
They let him work for the next half hour, pounding Freddie's story out on his typewriter. Most of it was a bitter comparison of the machinery of war.
"The French are magnificently equipped," Sean typed, "to refight World War I. So is the British Expeditionary Force, while in Belgium, King Leopold is defending his country with horse-drawn cannon that Napoleon might have rejected. Unfortunately nobody told the Germans about this historical pageant, so they have arrived with all the weaponry of modern war. General Gort does not possess a single gun with even half the range of the latest German models. Gort's tanks, mainly 'Matildas', carry frail two-pounder guns. The German Mark IVs are faster, more manoeuvrable and infinitely more heavily armed. As for air power ..."
It was yet another slashing attack on the Allied military command. Sean finished quickly and folded the top copy into his pocket.
They walked round to the Mirror together, Sean in the middle with Val on one side and Margaret on the other.
"Where is Freddie going?" Margaret asked as she negotiated the blackout.
"Wasn't I asking that when the line went dead. But he'll be around, nosing into this and that. Sure don't worry your pretty -"
"And don't waste your Irish blarney on me. Besides, I am not worrying."
She was and they all knew it. And Sean was worried too when they reached the Mirror. The first thing they were told was that Brussels had fallen.
"Where's the BEF?" Sean asked.
"Somewhere between Brussels and the sea."
Even with Freddie's latest report it seemed unbelievable. Gort had an army of nearly 400,000 men.
But Sean could picture only one man, driving across France in the face of that ferocious, unstoppable army.
He delivered Freddie's story which, in exchange for being able to use it themselves, the Mirror would immediately transmit to New York then he and Val took Margaret back to the family's suite in the Dorchester.
As soon as he and Val were alone, Sean told her of Freddie's plans to find Gort's army.
Val understood his worry at once. She tried to comfort him. "That was before Brussels fell. Freddie must know about that now. The news will have reached Paris. He'll change his plans -"
"No," Sean shook his head. "Not Freddie. He'll go chasing the biggest story of his life."
Finding Gort's army had been easy. Freddie simply drove to Amiens and headed for the sound of the guns. By mid-afternoon he had crossed into Belgium. But progress was slower after that.
It was the people, the refugees - a trickle at first, coming towards him, pushing handcarts, wheeling bicycles laden with goodness knows what strapped over the handlebars. Then it was horse-drawn carts so full of possessions that there was no room on the buckboard and the horse was led by its bridle as everyone walked. Then a queue of such carts, and more bicycles, and pack-horses, and donkeys laden until their knees buckled - and dozens of people, scores of people, then hundreds and hundreds.
They came towards him in a flood, an onrushing tide of desperate humanity. Vehicles of every description, piled high with possessions. When an axle collapsed under an overladen cart, people swarmed around it like ants, heaving and straining to clear the road of obstruction. Families wept as their only remaining earthly goods were dumped into a ditch. And still they kept coming - refugees by the thousand, who cast fearful backward glances, or screamed with fear when a Stuka buzzed overhead.
When Freddie drove into Tourcoing he met British soldiers coming from the other end of the town - motorised patrols, hastily clearing the way for Gort's army hard on their heels. He almost collided with one of Gort's adjutants, the very same man who had thrown him out of BEF Headquarters three weeks before. This time, however, Freddie was given a job. His car was requisitioned for use as an ambulance.
Three men bundled themselves into the back and a young officer, whose left leg ended at the knee, was lifted into the front seat. He grinned cheerfully. "Bloody cheek, swiping your car. Sorry and all that, but the MO says I'm unfit for boots. My name's Harry Hunt by the way."
It was Hunt who told Freddie where they were going - "The general idea is to make a retreat to the coast. The Navy is standing by to pick us up."
But it was not as easy as that.
Val told Margaret that Freddie had gone in search of the BEF. She was sorry afterwards. "It seemed the best thing to do," she said later to Sean, "I thought she would worry less if she knew Freddie was with the Army."
But a few days later, German advance troops overran Boulogne and besieged Calais, and everyone feared that the entire Army was lost.
Sean did his best to bolster morale. "Freddie's not a soldier. He's a non-combatant, an American citizen, a neutral observer -"
"As if neutrality worries the Nazis," Margaret snapped. "The Danes were neutral, the Norwegians, Belgians ..."
Waiting for news was agonising, and news when it came was invariably bad. The House of Commons listened to one grim announcement after another. The situation seemed bleak indeed, until, outside the Chamber, on the terrace overlooking the Thames and in the tea-rooms and bars, men hushed their voices as they talked of a miracle. There was just an outride chance - a million to one perhaps - but a chance ...
Sean hurried from one meeting to another, asking questions, probing, searching. He and Freddie were popular in Fleet Street. Most people liked the big Irish Navvy, trusted him with confidences, background for a story ... and thanks to Dinny's training, Sean had never let them down. And by that summer his contacts spread far beyond Fleet Street. He knew the rich of Eaton Square and the poor of Shadwell, and politicians, civil servants, people who made the wheels go round.
Even so, he unravelled the rumours in fragments. In a dockside pub at Shadwell, old Horace Watson talked of his son who was first mate on the Maidstone Castle, a collier which hauled coal from Newcastle down to London. "Requisitioned by the Navy this morning. Going to Belgium, they think. To pick up refugees, Billy reckons." Horace shook his head, "But it's for the BEF if you ask me."
In a shipping office on Leadenhall Street, a hundred yards from George Hamilton's boardroom, another friend, Tim Davis, confirmed that his company had also had a ship requisitioned. "Buggered if we expect it back either," he said, "especially if it is sent to Dunkirk. Calais would have been all right, but Dunkirk ..." he pulled a face. "Right ships' graveyard - the most tortuous twenty-five miles of shoal-ridden coastline in the Channel."
Jimmy Fox, a senior clerk in the Admiralty, said the same thing. "I'm still praying we can get into Calais. They'll never get the big stuff into Dunkirk. It would mean small boats ferrying men from the beaches out to the ships. They'd need whalers, lifeboats, motor launches - Christ, they'd never do it with
nearly four hundred thousand men to get off."
Three days later Calais fell to the Germans. The BEF was encircled at Dunkirk. Sean was in the House of Commons when Churchill rose. The green leather benches were packed tight by grey-faced men who listened to Churchill in shocked silence. After a brave fight and an unequal struggle, the Belgians had thrown in their hand, and the Prime Minister warned - "The House should prepare itself for hard and heavy tidings ..."
That could only mean the BEF. Gort's Army was done for.
Jimmy Fox was in despair at the Admiralty. Sean overheard him talking to a Rear Admiral. "Well, how many small boats do you want?" the Admiral asked in exasperation, "a hundred?"
"Look, sir, not a hundred," Jimmy's voice was tight with emotion. "Every bloody boat in the country needs to go even to have half a chance."
Afterwards,alone with Sean, Jimmy confirmed that the Admiralty had compiled a register of small boats only weeks before. "But they're not using it yet. They're requisitioning trawlers and Christ knows what. It's not trawlers they'll need, it's small boats and the crews to go with them." He groaned and put his head in his hands, "It's bloody hopeless."
Sean left him and went back to Craven Street. The empty house seemed unwelcoming and gloomy. Val had a committee meeting in the East End, war-work of some kind, he knew she would stay in Shadwell overnight. He thought he might go there later, but she would not be home until nearly eleven. He needed to go out. Every room reminded him of Freddie and made him feel guilty.
Eventually he went by bus to Marble Arch and walked down to the Dorchester, with the vague idea of seeing Margaret. She had not been round for a few days. He liked to keep an eye on her, cheer her up, make her laugh when he could. God, he owed Freddie that much. Funny how Margaret had changed. Even before Freddie went to France she had become more thoughtful, less inclined to spend time with her old crowd, in fact she had dropped most of them.
Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 123