German planes had been overhead and German mechanized forces were drawing closer. The women, shaken by the bombing and machine gunning they had suffered on the roads, were apprehensive of raids. We reassured them as best we could. They wished to get in touch with lost relatives. One begged me to telephone to Amiens to her husband, who she said was in the hospital there. It seemed cruel to tell her that Amiens had fallen to the Germans. A woman dragging herself up the stairs next attracted my attention. She was surrounded by her seven children. The eldest boy who appeared to be nine was carrying the youngest in his arms. She told me that they had walked for a week along the roads and had sometimes been lucky enough to get a lift in a wagon. Before leaving her home the mother had carefully dressed the children in their best, but their boots were worn now and their clothes tattered and soiled. She was expecting her eighth child and confessed that her hour had come. Luckily our car was waiting and my husband drove her to the Maternity Hospital where she gave birth to a boy. I wondered how we could feed this increasing flood of destitute humanity. It seemed to me as if the little town of Evreux had suddenly become the hub of the universe. Hundreds of trucks and cars were crowding the street. English troops moving north crossed refugees moving south. In spite of the incredible crowds I never saw troops held up or a traffic jam. Small boy scouts directed cars down appointed streets. The people were disciplined and orderly. Canteens had been organized and centers of information where refugees were told which towns would receive them.
Driving home I saw a lovely sight—a string of beautiful dapper ambulances. They were so new and spick and span in that drab crowd. Their women drivers and stretcher bearers looked so pretty in smart blue uniforms. Every ambulance had an inscription: "Given by the women of the Argentine." I wondered where they were going!
When we reached Motel we found one hundred and fifty French soldiers with three officers and a mitrailleuse there. They had become detached from their unit, for which they blamed the hordes of refugees. It seemed to me that we had done enough for one day, but we found rooms for the officers in the house and laid straw in the orangery for the men. We killed a sheep, and their field kitchen soon prepared a good meal. They told us that in some of the villages they had been shot at by Germans disguised as Frenchmen. We found it difficult to credit their tale, but in time we learned that the Fifth Columnists employed such methods in order to create havoc and demoralization.
The increasing number of refugees passing through the village was, I noticed, imposing a strain on our people. Even Dr. Du Bouchet, who had infinite kindness, was inclined to rebel when on returning from a hard day she found refugees in her bed. It was now three weeks since the endless flow had begun. Those we could not house slept in ditches or under trees by the roadside. They had learned to appreciate the immunity trees gave them from the searching eyes of bombers. As time went on and the zone from which they hailed grew closer, I felt the tension growing. Old men shook their heads and women looked at me anxiously as I passed. It was hard to keep cheerful with one's heart bursting with grief and indignation.
After ten years spent in a land at peace, I find it difficult to describe my reactions to the stress and turmoil of that spring. I remember a feeling of growing horror as the Huns approached. It was as if everything beautiful and fine and worthwhile was going to be destroyed. I had worked hard—I had simulated a courage I did not feel—I knew we were beaten. It seemed to me that the only thing that now mattered was to get our sanatorium children safely away. But before leaving I went to see the Comtesse Pierre de Viel Castel who lived in the village. Anna Ripley was an American and I wanted to consult her about an appeal we planned to send to our countrywomen. She met me on her doorstep, shocked at news she had just heard. It seemed that her daughter's mother-in-law had been killed by the Nazis!
"My daughter is upstairs," she whispered, "but has not yet been told. She adores her mother-in-law, and she is shortly expecting a child—how am I going to tell her?"
"How did it happen?" I asked.
Madame de M. had, she told me, been shot dead sitting at her husband's side in the car they were driving in. He, as Make of his village, was the last to leave after evacuation had been ordered, and had run into the German Bicyclist Corps. Luckily he himself had only been wounded and was therefore able to escape.
With the enemy so close, it seemed hardly the time for an appeal to Americans. Our friends across the sea were so far away. No words of sympathy had reached us. It struck us as strange that they should be so insensible to our woes. Indeed, at that moment everything seemed unreal, and we were dazed by a disaster we felt very near, for the wind blowing from the north was bringing the sound of guns ever more clearly to our ears.
The next day, June 6th, in obedience to the Health Department's instructions, we set out for Pau in search of quarters for the children. Jacques had orders to go south and was able to take me in his small Citroen—our chauffeur had been mobilized. We left with a valise apiece since we planned to be away for a few days only—just time to find a house, and then return to evacuate the children.
I shall never forget the sadness and the beauty of that last day at Motel. The fountains I so loved were throwing their sun-tipped jets into the still air; the children's laughter rang happily as they played nearby. I looked back as we drove away. The pink house with its blue roof was reflected in the waters of the moat. I prayed it would be spared.
Then we were on the road caught in the traffic that flowed south. A few miles beyond Dreux, tank traps were being dug and a seventy-five enfiladed the road. At Blois we crossed the Loire, its slow gray waters and its golden sands. The town was crowded with troops and refugees. The latest news was bad. People were talking of treachery and of how the bridges of the Meuse had fallen to criminal carelessness or worse. Rivers no longer meant defense against so mechanized an Army, they said. They grumbled that the refugees, of whom there were several million, were like hordes of locusts. They wondered how long there would be enough food to feed them and their horses—or gasoline for their cars. In a few days they anticipated that they, too, would be evacuating their homes, leaving all they possessed. It was heartbreaking to witness the gnawing anguish—the horrible disillusionment that had descended upon the proud people of France.
We reached Châteauroux for dinner and spent that night with Jacques's brother in his family home. During the night German planes dropped bombs close to our cloth factories and we were awakened at dawn by antiaircraft fire. When we left at eight o'clock my sister-in-law, who had already been to Mass, serenely bade us good-by.
The impersonal manner in which my French relatives discussed the progress of events always surprised me. There was no wishful thinking, no casual assumption of France's eventual victory as in England there would have been. Listening to them I wondered whether my lively imagination was at fault, for even then I anticipated the horrors of a Nazi occupation. Perhaps, I reflected, their tolerant civilization scorns to apprehend the inhuman methods of a ruthless tyrant. Whatever their thoughts may have been, their fortitude was admirable.
Leaving Châteauroux we pursued our way to Périgueux. The road runs over hills in a long straight line. Below are rich pastures on which graze the white Limousin cattle. The country spread before me like a landscape painted by the Primitives. Gothic tapestries came to life, and I visualized ladies riding caparisoned steeds, a hooded falcon on an extended wrist. But I lived in the twentieth century. Tanks, I reflected, would crush this rich earth, those beautiful trees would be felled, homes that had withstood the wear and tear of centuries would be shattered by these modern demons of destruction.
We found Pau overcrowded. Proximity to the Spanish frontier had attracted many whose activities were considered suspect. Distrust was rampant; arrests were numerous. I felt stifled in a malodorous atmosphere of disloyalties. We rushed our search for a house capable of accommodating some hundred children, and finally found a large villa which, although quite unsuitable for permanent use, could serve
as a temporary home. The Government commandeered the hotel where we spent the first night. Jacques's youngest brother, who lived in Pau, kindly asked us to share his apartment for the remainder of our stay.
Accustomed to rising with the lark, we left Pau at 4:00 a.m. on the third day, glad to be homeward bound. It seemed strange to see our way so clear; no one was going north and yet the southbound traffic never infringed the regulations and our half of the road lay free before us, stretching through an endless row of caravans. I thought of Epsom Downs on Derby Day, but here the gamble was one of life or death and in the stark disillusionment of the faces I saw I realized the stakes were heavily loaded. I wished Degas could have painted some of those scenes—a woman half nude bending over a basin in an unforgettable pose— another combing her golden hair against the rising sun.
At Périgueux we drew up at a café for much needed refreshment, and were greeted by two friends.
"Where are you going?" they asked us.
"To Saint Georges-Motel," we answered.
"You are crazy," they said, "the Germans are already there; the government has moved to Bordeaux."
"Nonsense," said my husband, "they exaggerate," and we resumed our way. Visions of the Nazi Bicycling Corps swam before my tired eyes. I would so much rather be shot than taken prisoner I reflected. Searching the traffic that now appeared to be flying south, I looked for our cars which, if the news were true, must be conveying our household to Pau. Suddenly I recognized one of them and our butler sitting next to the driver. He too had seen us and that evening telephoned to Henri Balsan's house, where he rightly concluded we would spend the night. Telephonic communications between the French departments having been stopped, it was fortunate that he was still near enough to reach us. We were then told that the Germans were indeed in our village, which had been evacuated. Saint Georges had been bombed, but neither the château nor the sanatorium had been hit. The hospital at Dreux, on the contrary, had received a direct hit, and we heard that our agent's wife, who had that day gone to be delivered of her child, had been killed, together with her newly born child. One more tragedy among so many when nerves are taut and sensibilities flexed is best ignored, and we chose rather to rejoice in the news that the sanatorium children had safely escaped. Albert, our butler, further told us that at the last moment Basil Davidoff, and Louis, my husband's valet, who both spoke German, had decided to remain in the château for its protection. Louis, being a Luxembourgeois, would, we hoped, be spared by the Germans, and Davidoff, a White Russian officer, could surely be considered safe. Nevertheless, we heard later that Louis had been nearly shot as a spy when the Germans moved in.
We had arrived at the Henri Balsans in the afternoon and our hosts still had a room to give us. Later as the evening wore on other members of the family kept driving up. Like ours, their homes were in the north. When every available bed had been allotted, mattresses were laid on the floors—even armchairs had their occupants. Never was hospitality more generously extended. I wondered how our host would be able to provide dinner for twenty unexpected guests, for Le Plessis is far from any town and French villages have little food to offer. I was therefore surprised by the excellence of our meal which, although limited to soup, macaroni, vegetables and a sweet, was served with the precise ritual of a banquet. How helpful such conventions are, I thought, as I listened to the pleasant flow of general conversation; we might be invited guests, not evacuees fleeing an invading enemy. This illusion was still further maintained by a lovely old lady who sat at Henri Balsan's right. With an aristocratic disdain for trouble and fear, she completely ignored the war and in the tradition in which the captain of a sinking ship gives orders to his crew she was compelling us to go down with flying colors! How gallantly she took that evening in hand—how humorously and wittily she steered the conversation away from the rocks and depths of the present to smooth waters of the past. Her sons and grandsons were with the armies—their womenfolk dispersed—her home in enemy hands—but not one word of all this escaped her. It was as if she wished to inspire the young women and girls around her, for whom she anticipated the humiliation and the sorrow of defeat, with the tradition of courage and endurance French women have ever shown.
Emotionally harrowed by the news the radio brought of captured towns, defeated armies and the incredible advance of the enemy, we wondered where their forces could be checked. With the Belgians no longer at war, the Italians our proclaimed enemy, and the English from their shores appealing to our distraught government to make a stand, what would happen next? For us there was but the simple decision to proceed south and there make preparations for the children who would soon join us at Pau. But even here a worry beset us, for Jacques had mislaid his gasoline coupons and without them we could not go on. We had just enough left to take us to the filling station we had last stopped at on our way north, and we hoped the little woman in charge might have found our coupons and kept them for us. All the way we worried over those coupons—it was perhaps as well to have a personal need at such a time—and when we found them our joy was great, and we blessed the honest woman who had kept them for us.
In Pau we again heard rumors of an impending armistice. With France under enemy occupation, my income as a French citizen would be frozen in America, and we would no longer be able to maintain the sanatorium. The children somehow had been fitted into the villa we had found for them, but we now had to plan to return those who were cured to their parents and to send those who still required care to other institutions. It was difficult to obtain reliable information, so we decided to motor to Bordeaux, the rumored seat of government. Bordeaux is a beautiful city. Upset as I was, the lovely old houses awakened my admiration. Reaching the American Consulate, we saw a long line of cars and crowds of excited people running in and out of its doors. The Stars and Stripes over the entrance held for us a false promise of peace. Inside, queues of frenzied people surrounded every official. It was impossible to reach one. Hemmed in the crowd, we were greeted by two American friends. One of them, an important official in the Red Cross, looked harassed and insistently begged me to leave the country. He told us that I figured on the Nazi hostage list. Only a few months back. Baron Louis de Rothschild had been imprisoned in Vienna and millions had been extorted from his family before he was returned. We were advised to cross the frontier at once— for it would soon be closed.
Impressed by this evident anxiety for my safety, we decided to approach Jacques's chief, the Ministre de l'Air, for permission to leave the country. He was difficult to find, because the government was only then moving into its new quarters. But when at last we found him, the fact that an armistice had been granted made Jacques's demobilization easy and he was not only given permission, but also advised to take me to America immediately. It remained only to obtain our visas. Urgent though the matter appeared to be, we nevertheless lunched in one of Bordeaux's famous restaurants, and my husband and the woman who shared our table—the owner of extensive vineyards—were soon engrossed in a discussion on viniculture, stimulated by an excellent bottle of claret; the war was not mentioned. As people were clamoring for seats, we decided to have coffee elsewhere and drove through a deluge of rain to the principal café where with difficulty we found an unoccupied table. The room was packed with a silent crowd. Suddenly the radio broke into the familiar bars of the "Marseillaise," which by now I had learned to associate with disaster. We all rose to our feet as if impelled. Then came the short and shattering announcement. "The French government has asked for an armistice, which has been granted." In the ensuing stillness, as men squared their jaws and women wept, we were terrorized by three terrific claps of thunder which rent the air in rhythmic sequence, as if the Heavens themselves were moved. "It's France that is being crucified," I said, and as if in a nightmare we found our car. At the American Consulate the same frenzied masses were besieging the staff. The news of an armistice had but spurred their fears; to cross the frontier had become their only preoccupation.
I fe
lt sorry for the officials. Unable to cope with so many distraught people, understaffed and overworked, they were, moreover, struggling to decipher new and urgent passport regulations which the State Department was sending out. I finally captured a secretary, who with evident reluctance listened to my application for a visa. Handing him our passports, I requested a visa to permit us to go to our home in Florida, a permission always granted in the past. But he answered:
"You can no longer claim a visiting visa—you will have to go over as an emigrant."
"Very well, we will go as emigrants."
Nevertheless he handed back our passports. "You will first produce your birth certificate, your marriage certificate and your divorce certificate," he grimly told us.
"Our papers are in Paris with our lawyer who has most certainly been evacuated. How do you expect me to produce them?"
I saw a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes at the thought that he had got rid of us; for during our somewhat heated conversation he had been darting about looking up new regulations, dictating to his secretary, arguing with a Frenchman who wished to return to his business in New York and rushing out to see the Consul, all the while keeping up a running commentary on the impossibility of working under such hectic conditions, and furthermore viewing with disfavor the idea of remaining in Bordeaux under German occupation. Then looking at his watch and throwing me a glance he said:
"It's six o'clock, you had better come back tomorrow."
"Don't waste any more time," said our kind counselor of the morning. "You will never get anything done here. Have your passports visaed for Spain and Portugal at Bayonne, where they have consulates and trust to getting your American entry in Lisbon. And hurry," he added ominously, "for the frontier may be closed at any moment, and then you will no longer get out."
The Glitter and the Gold Page 30