by Rosemary Say
‘They’re saying,’ Frida told me, ‘that we might go out with them tonight. Just ignore them. I don’t think they’re that interested.’
She was right. They came back into the compartment and made a few remarks to us in German but we made it clear that we couldn’t understand them. The journey was agonizingly long, with the train stopping and starting with depressing regularity. We wouldn’t make the connection for Besançon that was for sure.
‘We’re going to need somewhere to stay in Nancy,’ I whispered to Frida in French. ‘We can’t wait at the station all night.’
‘I know, but it’s too risky to go to a hotel without papers.’
We sat there, glumly thinking. ‘There’s nothing for it,’ I said at last. ‘I’m going to find the guard. Perhaps he can help us.’
We were in luck. The guard was immediately understanding. He told me there was a small hotel near the station that was what he called ‘sympatique et respectable’. It could have been a brothel for all I cared. We had started on a journey that already seemed far too long. I huddled into the corner of the carriage and this time I really did doze off, to be wakened by Frida shaking me.
‘Nancy. On arrive.’
Still only half awake, I climbed down the high carriage steps, anxious to get away from the soldiers. I missed the last step and fell heavily.
‘Damn! My ankle … I think I’ve bust it,’ I shouted out in clear English.
Frida stared at me horrified. The soldiers were looking out of the carriage windows watching us. We froze for a long moment. After a few seconds they closed the carriage door. They waved as the train pulled away. Very slowly we started to breathe again.
We found the hotel easily. The proprietress was a severe-looking woman who received us without a word. She handed us the registration forms to sign but didn’t ask for our papers. We followed her upstairs to our room. Still not speaking, she motioned to two pairs of German army boots placed outside the next bedroom and then left us. We sat on the bed and looked at each other. Well, we had made it, but it didn’t look like there was going to be much sleep for us that night. Our unwanted neighbours were hardly conducive to a good rest. And there was always the prospect of a random check on the hotel by the authorities.
‘What do you think?’ Frida asked. ‘Does she suspect we’re on the run? She must know the risk she’s taking.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want to get on the first train to Besançon.’
We had a very fitful night. We woke early the next morning and crept downstairs in the semi-darkness. The place was silent. In the small dining room the proprietress gave us some bread and hot herbal tea. Yes, she knew all right. It was our first encounter with the stolid resistance of the French towards an occupying army.
‘Bonne chance,’ she whispered to us as we left, still with absolutely no change of expression.
PART FOUR
The Long Road Home
NOVEMBER 1941 – MARCH 1942
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Into Unoccupied France
It was mid-morning when we arrived in Besançon. We headed down from the station into the beautiful, old part of town, enclosed by the hills and the loop of the river. Up the road to our right was the Caserne Vauban. I could feel its presence behind us. It was so strange to be back. I had seen the town so often from afar but I had never actually been in it before. The whole perspective and feel of the buildings changed from the desirable little toytown I had looked down upon for months to a real, breathing place. We quickly became lost.
‘We need to find someone to ask the way,’ Frida said, as we stopped by the mairie. ‘I’ve got the dentist’s address but have no idea how to get there.’
The town seemed to be deserted. What was going on? I saw a sprucely dressed family coming towards us.
‘It’s Sunday, of course. Everyone’s off to church.’
‘Oh God, that means we have a full day and night to kill before we can make contact,’ replied Frida. ‘I only have the man’s work address. What are we going to do? We can’t stay on the streets.’
‘No. And we can’t risk another hotel.’
We wandered gloomily around the town for what seemed like hours. By now we were both starving. Buying food proved difficult: although we had money we didn’t have any food coupons.5 Eventually we found a small shop in an alley where we could buy some pears and salt fish. We carried this banquet to a nearby church. We hoped to find, as in Épinal, a quiet side-chapel in which to eat. But on the door of the church was a notice: ‘Reservée pour la Wehrmacht’. We stared at it fascinated. We hadn’t come across this godly aspect of the invasion before.
We reached a small park and sat on a bench in the cold. Our behaviour brought such strange stares from the warmly clad inhabitants of the town who passed by that we hurried away. In the end we found a deserted municipal washroom and gulped down the food. Two women came in, so we hastily pretended to wash our hands and left. We walked aimlessly around the town. Most of the shops were boarded up for the day. We earmarked a battered hut in what looked like a building site as our quarters for the night. Meanwhile there were still some hours ahead of us. We passed a theatre ablaze with light. The notices outside announced that La Traviata was being performed. It had just begun.
‘Come on,’ I turned to Frida. ‘This will keep us off the streets for a few hours.’
I bought two tickets for the gallery and we climbed the stairs. The singing was indifferent but it kept our attention and at least the place was warm. As the curtain went down for the interval I leant over the balcony railings to find a sea of green uniforms below clapping enthusiastically. I shuddered and made a motion downwards to Frida with my eyes, but she was not paying any attention to me.
‘Spanish,’ she whispered and jerked her head behind.
I turned round cautiously. Sitting behind us was a small group of men talking in rapid Spanish, punctuated by loud laughter. To their delight Frida began to talk to them. They told her that they were Republican soldiers from the recent Spanish Civil War. They had fled the country as refugees and had been herded into French labour camps. Now they were being made to work for the Germans as well but were occasionally allowed Sunday evenings off.
Frida told them, in turn, that she had volunteered for their side during the war and had spent a year working for a radio station and driving an ambulance in Madrid. She also explained our plight. They immediately offered us a bed for the night. This was not only generous but also very brave. If caught they would almost certainly have been shot for harbouring escaped prisoners.
After the performance we followed them to a small room in a run-down building near the river. They told us that they stayed here whenever they could get permission to leave the labour camp. The offer of a bed turned out to be just that: one enormous bed in which they all slept and around which they kept their bicycles. The room was heated by a large stove and soon became warm and stuffy. We greedily shared their fatty sausages and stale bread, which we washed down with a huge casket of rough, red wine.
I crawled over the bicycles and curled up on the bed, exhausted after two nights of very little sleep. I felt safe and warm. In a few minutes I was out. I woke up a couple of times to hear Frida still talking to them, as indomitable as ever. She told me later that they had discussed the Spanish situation until dawn. My last memory of that night is of one of the men hitting the seat of a bicycle shouting ‘Muerte a Franco!’
The next morning our Spanish friends gave us directions to the dentist’s address. We left them early to be at the surgery as soon as it opened. I told the rather frosty receptionist that I was in agony from a back tooth. We were in luck: there were no other patients yet and we were ushered straight in.
The dentist was an extraordinarily fat man of about sixty with a glistening, bald head and a stony face. He beckoned me to the chair without saying a word. Frida and I were both incredibly nervous. After all, we didn’t know for sure that he was even on our side
, let alone willing or able to help us.
‘Monsieur Bedaux recommended you to us,’ said Frida quietly as he peered into my mouth.
‘That was very good of him,’ he said, with the first hint of warmth coming to his face. ‘I hope that I can be of assistance.’ He took some francs from his pocket and gave them to me. ‘Pay Madame Chaillet on your way out. Be back here at seven o’clock precisely.’
We left. There was another whole day to kill and nothing to do, but we felt elated. Suddenly we were no longer alone. We spent that cold day sheltering in the municipal washroom, having to leave it every time someone came in. We were starving but didn’t dare risk another shop. We made do with some bread from the night before.
That evening we approached the surgery at the appointed time. The door was opened by the dentist just as I was raising my hand to ring the bell. He made a small movement with his index finger to indicate silence and led us upstairs. It was obvious that he lived above the surgery. We had had his home address all the time without knowing it! There were four men in the sitting room. They rose as one when we entered.
‘Messieurs,’ he said with a flourish of his hand. ‘May I present our brave young Englishwomen.’
Formal introductions were made. Our companions turned out to be the mayor of the town, a schoolmaster, a lawyer and the owner of a bicycle shop. They questioned us closely about conditions in both camps. They were particularly interested in the security arrangements at Vittel and seemed pleased and even amused at the idea of a hole in the perimeter wire there. They also wanted information on suspected German collaborators among the French workmen at both camps, but we had no hard evidence to give them, just a few rumours that the lawyer carefully wrote down. The helpfulness of our heating engineer and his friend was also noted.
Suddenly all discussion was at an end. The dentist went to the kitchen and returned with a tray bearing two bottles of wine and the wonderful sight of green olives! He filled our glasses. We raised them and all stood. It was the mayor who spoke.
‘To General de Gaulle, Monsieur Churchill and our new friends here.’
We drank the toast and then huddled around the radio set while the schoolmaster fiddled with the dials to get the BBC news from London. At last Stuart Hibberd came over loud and clear. ‘Good evening,’ he said. I could picture him there in his dinner jacket and I found myself saying ‘Good evening’ back to him in my shabby clothes and broken shoes. I looked at Frida. We both had tears in our eyes.
We stayed that night in the attic room above the bicycle shop. It was in a small courtyard off the rue de la Vieille Monnaie, a quiet street at the far end of town. Like so many of these courtyards in Besançon, it was reached through an imposing main door that led off the street. I felt secure and hidden in this little warren of old buildings. For the whole of the following day we sat quietly on our bed. I found a copy of Balzac’s Les Paysans on a bookshelf in the room. I spent the time reading it, relishing his descriptions of the wily French peasants.
The real surprise for us came that evening. It was Armistice Day – 11 November. The whole town seemed to be out celebrating, regardless of the German army’s presence. It was their way of showing defiance. We were taken to a cavernous old bar on the way up to the citadel at the far end of town. There we were introduced to everyone and feted for being British escapees. The wine and the cognac quickly went to our heads as this was the first serious drinking we had done in months.
We were then led through the back door to a very elegant photographic studio where an elderly man silently took our photos for new identity papers. This done, the dentist insisted on taking us to another bar in the town centre, full of anciens combattants (veterans). No introductions were made this time, perhaps due to the presence of some young German soldiers drinking at the far end. Frida and I became increasingly nervous as the endless toasts were made – to victory, de Gaulle, revenge, Churchill and (curiously) the Labour politician Stafford Cripps. When the veterans started on a gutsy rendition of ‘La Marseillaise’ we pleaded tiredness and asked our friend to take us home.
‘I think we’re going to make it, Frida,’ I said as we lay on our beds later that night. ‘We’re going to get real help. Thank goodness your contact was sound. I was so scared but I can almost see the Swiss border now, we’re so close.’
‘Perhaps we’ll be dining in a flashy Zurich restaurant on Saturday night,’ she said with a smile. ‘The Hoffmans will be surprised when we turn up on their doorstep!’
Carl Hoffman was an old friend of her father’s from Cambridge. We were relying on him to make arrangements for our return to England.
The next day passed in a whirl as the news of our presence quickly spread around the town. Everyone seemed to want to greet us and to share their paltry rations. We even tasted real coffee for the first time in well over a year. It was made proudly for us by the owner of a large hotel. That evening the dentist and the mayor produced our false identity cards, ration books, food coupons and an extra 500 francs (about £120 today). I was identified as an Anna Triolet, aged twenty-two, originally from Avignon.
‘These documents are fine but not so good that they’d stand up to much more than a quick examination,’ said the mayor as we went over them.
‘That doesn’t matter too much. If you’re searched they’re bound to find your British passports,’ the dentist added in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Have you taken off all the labels from your English clothes?’
We nodded. My clothes could pass as French (thanks to Madame Manguin) but I was concerned that Frida’s looked very English.
The bicycle shop owner woke us very early the next morning. He led us wordlessly in the dark through a maze of streets to a small courtyard where he ushered us onto the back of a horse-drawn wagon. He kissed us goodbye. The wagon pulled off while it was still dark. After what seemed an interminable ride we reached a small village where we were put onto the back of an old lorry. A couple of hours later we stopped at the rear entrance of a hotel. We were now very near the Swiss border. A nervous young woman carrying a baby in her arms led us into the dining room. While we ate a meal of stale bread and hot milk she told us that she was the manageress. Her husband was a soldier who had been captured in May 1940. She had heard that he was imprisoned in Germany but didn’t know where.
‘You will remain in here’, she said, showing us into a back room. ‘If the front door bell rings you must hide in the wardrobe. I will lock it and take the key.’ She saw the look of dismay on our faces.
‘I am sorry, but this is necessary,’ she added. ‘The contact who’ll be bringing you over the border won’t be here until tonight.’ She hurried back to her duties elsewhere.
It was a long, boring day stuck in that back room with nothing to do and no books to read. We spent a few uncomfortable and suffocating periods locked in the wardrobe keeping absolutely silent. We were pent-up with excitement and expectation, for the Swiss border and freedom seemed almost within touching distance. That evening our contact was brought to see us. He was a tall, thin man who could not have been much older than I was. He paced the room nervously and could hardly look us in the eyes as he told us the news.
‘The main problem in getting you out of France is that this whole area on both sides is heavily policed by German, French and Swiss guards,’ he began. ‘Last week a passeur took three escaping English soldiers over. One fell and twisted his ankle. The others carried him but they were all caught, including my compatriot. We have no news of him yet.’
‘How much will it cost?’ asked Frida, cutting straight to the point, as ever. She’d realized what the man’s nerves were about. ‘We’ve got money to pay.’
‘There is perhaps someone who will take you over. But it will cost 10,000 francs,’ he replied, turning his head away.
We stared at him, open mouthed. ‘But that’s robbery!’ I shouted. ‘We’ve only got about 1,000 francs between us. You can have it all.’
‘That’s not enough.’
&n
bsp; ‘You’ve got to help us. We’ve escaped from a camp and just want to get home. We’re not tourists. We can’t go back. You can have all the money we’ve got.’
‘This is war, Mademoiselle, not one of your cricket matches.’ And with that rather fatuous reply he stormed out. The young woman looked at us apologetically.
‘I shall arrange for you to return to Besançon as soon as possible,’ she said and left the room.
We were shocked. We had come so far and were now only a few miles from freedom. I sat on the bed, stunned. Frida took charge of the situation.
‘We’ve got to change our plans, Pat. We’ll go over the line into the Unoccupied Zone and then down to Marseille. We can get a boat from there.’
‘How do you know? You’re just guessing. It’ll be just as difficult to get across the line. They might want even more money.’
‘No. I’ve heard it’s not as bad as the Swiss border. There are only a few German sentries on bicycles with guard dogs. And that’s for a border hundreds of miles long. Come on, it’s the only thing left for us.’
The hotel manageress was as good as her word. We were taken back to Besançon in a decrepit lorry later that evening and spent a rather miserable night above the bicycle shop. By dawn we were on our way south again to a village called Arbois on the demarcation line. To our amazement we were driven there in an official police car. ‘Vive le BBC!’ were the policeman’s parting words as he left us at a farmhouse.
The old couple there led us into the kitchen and then left us alone. They had their own work to do in the fields. We were learning fast that people who helped us had to keep up the routine of their normal lives, to hide the huge risks they were taking. This often meant that they hardly spoke to us, if at all. As it got dark the couple came back from the fields. We all sat by the fire in silence, waiting for the guide that the policeman had promised us. When he finally arrived he turned out to be a rather pimply boy of no more than about fifteen.