Rosie's War

by Rosemary Say

  Life’s a monotonous but not unpleasant round, a sort of island of rest-curing, reading, tennis, music and it’s sometimes difficult to believe that the tempestuous world outside exists … There are crowds of bores here …

  The class divisions were largely as a result of our softer surroundings. There was much more leniency here on parcels. Gone was what seemed the revolutionary boldness shown in those terrible early days of Besançon, when the camp had been severely stricken with dysentery. Even recently we had shown fighting spirit with the insensitive de-lousing plan. At Vittel, however, we felt almost deflated now that the struggle was apparently over. Although we didn’t know it at the time, perhaps we were experiencing the same flat feeling that was to be felt in Britain after the Blitz by those who looked back to that time of camaraderie when everyone had pulled together.

  Some of us, nevertheless, still kept up over the coming months a barrage of complaints: over the blatant disappearance of our Red Cross parcels (a constant theme in my letters home), the haphazard censorship of books sent to us and the indifferent quality of the food, even though on this last point Christine and I agreed that it was now just about on par with boarding school fare.

  To the dismay of our room, we found that most people seemed to be settling down quite happily for what could be an indefinite period of confinement. They wanted no more trouble. They acquiesced in the break-up of the elected Prisoners Committee and did not query the new appointments made by the Kommandant. He now controlled the unelected British representatives who replaced the Schwesters and who were accountable to him for the smooth running of their particular floors. They all seemed to me to be bossy, middle-aged types. They wore armbands and looked pleased to be helping the authorities (in return, of course, for special privileges). Within a few weeks they had reported on three prisoners who were planning to escape.

  We suspected that these women wrote at least some of the unsigned letters that the Kommandant began to receive. Their missives complained of other internees’ behaviour. These anonymous writers were the scourges of the place: embittered, jealous and frustrated, they would see themselves as part of a crusade to give the least trouble to the Germans and to hound the rest of us.

  With the loss of any community spirit in the camp, I began to look much more not only to my close friends near by but also to my family and friends at home. Like all prisoners of war, I eagerly awaited letters. Red Cross telegrams were often terribly delayed and could say little other than banalities. Yet they provided a wonderfully reassuring lifeline that could be read day after day. Typical was a telegram sent by my father on 18 June:

  ALL WELL HERE ANXIOUS TO RECEIVE YOUR NEWS. FONDEST LOVE WE MISS YOU MORE THAN EVER. DADDY AND MUMMY.

  My reply to this was (and I can’t work out why I was allowed so many words):

  DON’T BE ANXIOUS ABOUT ME. VERY WELL AND FLOURISHING. RECEIVE YOUR LETTERS REGULARLY. PLENTY OF NOURISHMENT, MUSIC,TENNIS, FILMS, BOOKS AND RAIN. FONDEST LOVE PAT.

  Our families would scrimp and save to send us food, money and clothes at a time when they themselves were cut to the bone. My mother raided my wardrobe at home. I was delighted to find waiting for me one morning a parcel of underwear. At last I could abandon my dirty grey outfit! My parents also sent a large amount of my pre-war poetry collection. Unfortunately this arrived the day before I escaped from the camp and I had to leave it all behind.

  Such a lifeline did not exist for all internees. The elderly spinsters who had kept themselves to themselves all their lives, for example, were now cruelly forgotten in the excited morning rush for a precious sign of communication by letter or parcel. We in our high spirits and selfish youth found these women boring and uninteresting.

  Their isolation was brought home to me as I sat at lunch one day. A money order from Bobby had arrived. I was in a great mood, discussing with Shula and Olga what we could buy with the money on the camp black market. As usual, food was at the top of my priorities! Succulent dishes were by now being made and sold by many internees and I was determined to have some. It would be better than the dirty-brown soup and the stone-hard bread in front of us. The elderly lady sitting next to me, a Miss Walker, put her bony hand on mine.

  ‘You’re blessed to have such good family and friends, Miss Say,’ she said simply with a sweet smile.

  She was genuinely pleased for me. Yet she was all alone in the world. I knew this because she had told me just a few days before that she had spent her life looking after other people’s children as a governess. Not only was she alone in the world but, like many of the older women, she spoke very little French which was the common language of the different nationalities in the camp. I felt ashamed of my self-centredness. I resolved later that day that the least I could do would be to ensure through a friend that some of my possessions went to her if I ever managed to escape.

  Money from home could also be used to buy toilet necessities. In the summer a special concession was given to two salesmen who were allowed to distribute toiletries and sewing things. They came every couple of weeks and dashed all over the place scattering talcum powder, soap, flannels and sanitary towels in their wake. Of course, most of these articles were of the ersatz version; toothpaste, for example, seemed to come from a lump of mushed fish gills. We didn’t mind. Anyway, it was pleasant to chat to this pair of active little men, especially as we missed the company of the French doctors and the male prisoners. It was also an opportunity to glean some information about the outside world.

  I was preoccupied by the need for a spare toothbrush. The old one that I had managed to procure at Besançon was becoming very threadbare. I had asked my parents repeatedly for a replacement but for some reason nothing had arrived. Perhaps it had been sent but had been pilfered before it reached me. I asked one of the salesmen if he could get me one. On his next visit he told me that he had some in his supplies box at the back of the hotel. I went with him along the corridor to choose one.

  ‘In here, Mademoiselle,’ he said, opening the door of a small storeroom.

  He almost pulled me in, switched on the light and shut the door behind him. Wordlessly he began to fumble with my breasts and made a feeble attempt to kiss me on the mouth. I was revolted by his teeth, cracked and covered with tartar, and turned my face away. He pushed me against the sharp prickles of the upturned brooms and brushes. Just then we heard someone whistling in the corridor outside. He looked at me in apprehension, perhaps fearing that I might scream. Once he was sure that I wasn’t going to, he opened the door, ran his hand over his bald head and gave me a toothbrush from his pocket.

  ‘I might have other things for you the next time I’m here,’ he said and gave me a conspiratorial smile. ‘If we have a bit more time, of course,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied feebly. ‘Thank you.’

  I made my way back to my room. I was a bit shocked by what had happened but at least I had my toothbrush. And in return for nothing! Not as yet, anyway.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Camp Routine

  As in the previous camp, I worked during the week-day mornings in the Kommandant’s office. Along with all the non-German office staff, I was now under a taciturn, middle-aged French corporal called Didier, who would obsessively pick his nose when he thought I wasn’t looking. I got to know the Kommandant and his officers quite well over these months. Perhaps their friendliness had something to do with the fact that they were confident that Germany was about to win the war and that our countries would reach a peace deal.

  One day in early October the news came that Moscow was apparently about to fall to the German army. The Kommandant paced the outer office excitedly as I sorted out some files.

  ‘Fräulein Say,’ he said to me in his deep, agitated voice. ‘We have defeated Slav Communism. Why should we Teutonic people continue to fight each other?’

  ‘I think, Herr Kommandant,’ I replied calmly, ‘that the British Government went to war for a cause it believed in. It still wants to achieve its aim
s.’

  ‘But surely Herr Churchill will now see the futility of continuing the war? He will want to make peace. Your father is a naval man, I know. He would certainly agree that our countries should be friends.’

  ‘I think you would have to ask him yourself, Herr Kommandant, but his answer would probably be no.’

  It was the familiar argument that I had with the German officers throughout the summer. As always, my position seemed to puzzle them. They simply could not understand why Britain wanted to be at war with another Teutonic nation. My replies always needed to be carefully couched and to express as little as possible of any controversial opinion of my own. I was, after all, in the Kommandant’s office. He was a genial and engaging man but he was not to be trusted and my words could at any time be reported to the Gestapo officer. He, like many of the Germans, had the idea that Britain was a good country but rotten to the core.

  Our daily and weekly routines were very ordered. Once I had completed my morning work the rest of the day was my own until 7 p.m., when all the internees were locked in their buildings for the night. I was at the camp from May until November 1941 and for much of that time the weather was wonderful. Stanley, who had been a great organizer of team games at Besançon, continued to set up matches and tournaments using the tennis courts and the spacious grounds. Frida received two new tennis rackets from home and a small group of us would spend endless hours playing, watched carefully and enthusiastically by the German officers.

  In the autumn, Stanley had the courage to highjack a visiting Red Cross delegation with a complaint about the regular filching by the guards of our Red Cross parcels. As soon as the delegation had left she was promptly sent away to Germany and we never saw her again.

  Reading was the other mainstay of the afternoons. I read for hours up on the roof: Balzac, Stendhal, Dickens (when available) and above all Dostoevsky, whose impassioned and obsessive writing seemed to fit the atmosphere of the camp.

  There were also various indoor pastimes and activities: lectures, study, card playing, the orchestra, as well as more informal stuff such as seances and political discussions. The latter took up many, many evenings for the others in my room. Frida and Penelope were convinced Communists and Shula was soon converted. Sofka would hold court in her secluded attic room with Shula sitting at her feet, eyes shining as she listened to the gospel of Lenin from the older and more experienced women.

  As a Russian princess, Sofka had been considered suitable for marriage to the young Tsarevich, Alexei Nikolaevich, heir to the Russian throne. She had been bundled out of Russia as a child in 1919. Her own conversion to Communism was a thrilling move to make over twenty years later at Vittel. As she herself writes in her autobiography: ‘It was these discussions that provided the answer to all those queries and searching that, off and on, had so disturbed me. They explained to me an ideology that I felt could eventually provide mankind with an equitable basis for existence that no other theory ever had.’

  For my part, I tried to avoid being dragged into these evening discussions that seemed to gather more significance as the nights drew in and our outside activities were increasingly curtailed. I admired my friends for their intensity and their questing for a brave new world. I was fired with many of their beliefs but each time they dramatically declaimed ‘the answer’ I pulled back. My own schoolgirl searchings over the rights and wrongs of a particular political theory always brought me back to parliamentary socialism, where it seemed to me that the individual was left to chart his own path in his own way without giving up his right to query a faceless outside discipline.

  The first time I went to one of the meetings in Sofka’s room was not long after the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union. There was great excitement that Stalin was now in the war on the Allied side. Frida sat at the table, banging it with her fist in her excitement.

  ‘Churchill’s government must be pushed to open a Second Front in Europe as soon as possible and the Soviets need British and American supplies now. The Fascist sympathizers in those countries mustn’t be allowed to stop them from getting through. The war will be won by the Red Army.’

  The others agreed. But I was troubled by one major issue.

  ‘Why did the Soviets sign a pact with the Nazis in the first place?’ I asked the room. ‘That gave Hitler the green light to go to war with Western Europe. In some ways that’s why we’re all here.’

  I was shouted down by a barrage of voices. My friends had all the standard excuses for Stalin’s behaviour between 1939 and 1941 but none held water for me. We would always come back to our disagreements over the Nazi–Soviet pact. I felt terribly let down by the Soviet Union and was depressed by my friends’ almost blind faith in Stalin: one day virtually the ally of Hitler, the next his sworn enemy. I couldn’t forget that until just a few days before, my Communist friends had been ambivalent about what they called the imperialist war. They had certainly not been fully on the Allied side up to then.

  Our arguments would go round and round in circles. I enjoyed the company and the fun of listening to the discussions. I had recently discovered the doubtful joys of knitting and would get wool from an elderly Parisian lady in exchange for chocolate. Much to the intense irritation of the others, I would concentrate earnestly on my latest work-in-progress while attempting to debate with them. My first real knitting achievement was a pair of bedroom slippers, with the soles made from the tapestry seat cover of a chair in our hotel foyer, strengthened with strips of pale blue material cut out from a French Army coat from the First World War. If I didn’t have my knitting I would just sit there and daydream. My favourite involved a No.13 bus going down the Finchley Road past my home en route to an enormous restaurant displaying mounds of succulent food!

  Many of the organized activities took place in the vast spaces of the Casino, which had a huge hall with a good size stage and numerous function rooms. At any given time it could accommodate study classes, orchestra practice and play rehearsals. Miss Derriman, an indefatigable headmistress figure, arranged a whole series of classes, lectures and study groups, ranging from Russian literature to bookbinding and bee-keeping. I spent a few hellish months tackling German in the rather vague belief that it might come in useful if I managed to escape. By the latter part of the war it was apparently even possible to study for external exams. Madeleine White told me later she had sat her entrance exam for the Sorbonne. She had travelled to Paris, handcuffed and accompanied by German guards, and had stayed for three nights with her aunt before returning to Vittel.

  A reasonably competent orchestra was set up by a quiet and refined Frenchwoman. She helped us to produce some less painful but still hair-raising variations on the themes of Mozart and Beethoven. No longer were our concerts given, as at Besançon, in the ramshackle outhouse normally used for peeling potatoes and carrots, with skins slippery on the wet floor and curtains made from mattress covers. They now took place in a proper concert hall where a few loyal music lovers sat and listened to us.

  I’m sure that the discipline of practising was a great stimulus. But I fear that in my particular case the results were definitely not worthy of the effort. I could only be described at best as an enthusiastic violinist. In London before the war I had been a member of the Ernest Read Junior Orchestra which met at the Royal Academy. On one occasion Read had tapped his music stand and shouted in exasperation: ‘Someone in the second violins is playing the wrong piece!’ He didn’t know exactly who it was and therefore could not identify me as the culprit, but I still felt like the man in the old H.M. Bateman drawings.

  During my months in the camp a number of revue shows were held in the Casino hall. In all this mass of able-bodied and under-employed women there was plenty of professional talent. Apart from the Bluebell girls, there were many other dancers from all over Europe, singers and musicians from the Paris Conservatoire and the Paris Opéra, conjurers, acrobats, actresses, directors and stage designers. The revues were popular with the German officers and guards. A
highlight for me was to hear Shula singing Jewish songs while our German captors hummed along appreciatively, blissfully unaware of their origin!

  At the weekends we had the cinema to look forward to. I loved the French films with the major stars of the time, such as the comic Fernandel with his horse-like teeth and the sultry Michèle Morgan. At first the German authorities tried to use these films as an opportunity to slip in Nazi propaganda shorts. These showed the smiling faces of people joining hands in one great crusade to inspire the rest of Europe with the glories of Hitler’s regime. They were regularly met by a barrage of hoots, whistles and catcalls. They were soon dropped. After this we were subjected to a series of sugary romances between a blond Siegfried and his equally blonde Gretel. These in turn were greeted by our ‘Ooohs!’ and ‘Aaahs!’ of exaggerated delight. The first time this happened, a lady sitting in the row in front turned round. She was one of the Kommandant’s representatives, Miss Bannister, with whom I had had a number of run-ins.

  ‘Do you mind being quiet,’ she said crossly. ‘You’re interrupting the film. Goodness knows, I would have thought that we could all do with a bit of harmless romance.’

  Shula and I giggled, which enraged her even more. We weren’t going to stop making fun of the film but in the interest of diplomacy I decided to make sure that we were seated well away from Miss Bannister for the next show.

  Seances were one of the strangest activities that flourished from the beginning of our time at Vittel. Many people became deeply and totally committed. Perhaps such involvement answered a real human need to come to terms with being alone and cut off from family. Many people had lost relatives and friends, killed or missing in the war. I don’t know if occultism flourished in England at this time but at Vittel it was rife. Even our room was not immune to its appeal. Olga was deeply involved. After what must have been the second or third session she asked me if I would like to join them.