by Sharon Maas
‘I feel terrible!’ she confessed to Margaux. ‘You have been so kind to me and now I am leaving you to – to whatever is to come, to the uncertainty of the future. How can you ever forgive me?’
But Margaux only hugged her and, philosophical as ever, encouraged her. ‘Go!’ she said. ‘Go and build a life of your own. I will miss you, but I have felt your restlessness. Do not worry about us. We are strong, we are resilient. Alsace will stay Alsace, whoever is in power; wine remains wine, and even the Boche love wine and therefore will not destroy its source. Life goes on, through all the changes. So what if Alsace becomes German again? We will still make wine, won’t we? But you, you are English and you will not be happy under Adolf Hitler.’
‘But surely…’
‘I loathe the man, and what I have heard of him. He is as un-French as is possible. My allegiance is to France, and always will be. But we are farmers, wine farmers. Kathleen, politics to me is a game men play, just like little boys playing with their guns. It is a power game. All I want is to be safe with my children. The British Foreign Office has advised your Edward to return, and return he must, and you must go with him. Though I will miss you desperately!’
‘I will miss you too – and the girls! What will I tell the girls? This is their home; they will be devastated!’
‘Yes – it will be hard for the girls to leave. But you know what, children are resilient, and adapt quickly, and as long as their Maman is with them they will be fine. They like Edward, and will accept him as a father. And, Kathleen, believe me, they need a father, a good father, even though they are no longer young children. Jean-Pierre can never be a father to them. He isn’t even a father to his own children.’
‘But I feel so guilty, deserting you at such a time!’
‘Do not feel guilty, chérie. C’est la vie; circumstances change. We must adapt to the changes, even though they might not be to our liking. Make the best of things. I do not feel you are deserting me. I feel you are moving on with the flow of your life; it brought you here when you needed to be here, and it is taking you back to England because the time is ripe for such a move. You can go with an easy conscience because I want you to go, even though I will miss you.’
‘I will miss you too! I will miss this place, your wonderful family, the house, the vineyards!’
‘New and wonderful things will come your way. Look forward, not back. We will cope. The Boche is no match for Alsace!’
And she raised a fist, and shook it, in brazen defiance of anything the Germans could do, and laughed; but she laughed too soon, as time would show.
Elena and Sibyl were indeed devastated when told that they would all move back to England.
‘But we belong here! It is our home!’ wailed Sibyl.
‘You will find a new home, in England. And you can come back to visit, every year. We are going, Sibyl. Please don’t make a fuss. I know you don’t want to but in life we cannot always get what we want and it is better you learn that now; it is a lesson that will make you strong.’
‘My heart will always belong to Alsace!’ said Sibyl as they drove away in the car, and Kathleen rolled her eyes. There was no such thing as always, and what did young people know? They had their dreams but dreams can easily fall apart, as her first dream, her first marriage, had done. Better to follow Margaux’s advice, and be practical, and adapt to the circumstances of reality, the ones you cannot change.
Because, in her heart of hearts, Kathleen was terrified. The Germans were altogether too close, and too threatening; Jean-Pierre, whenever he came up from Paris, seemed to relish his accounts of just how precarious the peace was.
‘Mark my words, the Boche will return, and Alsace will be the first to fall when they march in. The Maginot line will fall like a line of matchsticks stuck in the earth, and now that they have this Adolf Hitler…’
* * *
Unfortunately, it turned out that Jean-Pierre was right. In September 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany following the invasion of Poland two days previously. The British deadline for the withdrawal of German troops expired, and their worst fear became their worst reality. War.
Jean-Pierre was also right in another matter. The Maginot Line was useless. But it did not fall; it was simply ignored. When Germany invaded France it was from the north, through Belgium and the Low Countries. The Battle of France ended in a stinging defeat. Paris fell. British forces were driven back to Dunkirk and had to be rescued. Safe in her home in Sussex, Kathleen watched all this with anguish, and yet more guilt and worry for her friend Margaux and her children, from whom there was no news whatsoever.
Kathleen had encouraged both her daughters to train in skills that would stand them in good stead through life by giving them the means to support themselves, even if they were to marry and have children. Her own life had taught her that it was not a good thing to be entirely dependent on a husband. One never knew…
Elena went into training as a bilingual secretary, like her mother, and soon after starting her first job met her husband. Sibyl had ideas of her own. Through Oncle Jean-Pierre she had always known there would be another war, and always known that she must prepare, and always known she would become a nurse.
Sibyl began her nurse’s training in 1938, in Guy’s Hospital, London. In September 1939, after war with Germany was declared, a section of Guy’s was evacuated out of London. Sibyl continued her probation at the Kent and Sussex Hospital near Tunbridge Wells, Kent, near her own home in Three Bridges. It was work that cut deep into her consciousness. France! Her beloved France was broken, wounded, dying. She had to get back…
In early June, 1940, the reality of war hit her for the first time. Sibyl was ordered to report to Casualty, and there she was plunged into the true horror of war: her patients, from now on, were the wounded of Dunkirk.
They were brought in by running orderlies, some screaming, some too wounded even to scream for they were unconscious. Some with burns that covered their whole body, their skin black and blistering; some with limbs torn apart, their flesh in ribbons. Some had to have legs and arms amputated. She had to dress the remaining stumps; stumps on young men at the prime of life. Some were blinded. And those were just the physical wounds. All would carry invisible wounds; their nights evermore would be disturbed by horrendous nightmares. They would wake up screaming, howling, or never sleep at all but only howl. Their days would be distorted by memories; they had endured and seen horrors that no human should ever see. Things that would remain as memories never to be erased. They were maimed for life.
Some of them were French. As the only nurse, indeed the only employee, on the ward who spoke fluent French, Sibyl was indispensable, both as a translator and as a confidante to the wounded French.
Occasionally there were German prisoners of war; she translated for them too. Spoke to them. Some of them were no more than boys and they reminded her of her French adopted brothers Leon and Lucien. She wanted to hate them, but she couldn’t. People were just people, she realised. All labels, all classifications, were just that: labels, classifications. Divisions. French, German – what did it matter? These were no more than attributes, labels; ideas, characteristics, descriptions superimposed over the foundation of one’s basic humanness, one’s true naked self. It was identification with labels that caused all the strife in the world. That divided people. All the messes, all the chaos, both internally and externally, came from people identifying with the label instead of their basic humanness.
Externally, such false identifying could, and had, led to war. The English now fought the Germans and sought to kill them and vice versa. One set of labelled people destroying another. These poor German boys: they were not evil. They were not the enemy, sinister and fear-inducing. They had only followed orders. They were only wounded boys. Their pain, their screams, were no different to the pain and the screams of the English or the French. Somewhere in Germany there were women whose hearts ached for them: their mothers. Every wounded and dead soldie
r was some mother’s son, no matter what his nationality; because humanness, and the love that binds us, makes no distinctions and is free of labels.
So Sibyl tried to treat her German patients exactly as she treated her English ones. One could call it love; but maybe that was too strong a word. It certainly wasn’t a word that could be spoken out loud. Because this was wartime, and she bore a label, and so did they, and the reality of these times demanded an adherence to those labels, a pretence.
As a nurse, a good nurse, her obligation was to care for all equally. At the same time, the reality of wartime meant that she must play the role she found herself in, and that was an English nurse, with an obligation, a duty, to take sides. With a hunger for the war to be over, the Allies to win, and France to be free.
It was a role that cut deep into her consciousness. France! Her beloved France was broken, wounded, dying. She had to get back.
Her training complete, Sibyl applied to join the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. She received her letter of acceptance. But then she met Mr Smith.
Part II
1943: Perspectives
‘The Victor will never be asked if he told the truth.’
Adolf Hitler
Chapter 10
It was a most mysterious summons. Matron told her no more than that she should attend such-and-such a meeting at such-and-such an address in London; and that she would be given an afternoon off to do so. The ward was hopelessly short-staffed; Sibyl could not understand it, but she went anyway.
The address was at an inconspicuous terraced house in a dingy side street near Victoria station. She found herself outside a tall, grubby building, accessed via a door in an alleyway to the side, next to it a row of buttons with equally grubby name labels. She checked once more the slip of paper she had been given and pressed the bell next to the name ‘Inter-Services Bureau’ and waited. After a short wait the door was opened by a young woman smartly dressed in a grey suit. ‘Hello, I…’ The woman nodded curtly and took the letter out of Sibyl’s hand, read it, and signalled for her to follow.
The woman led the way into a dimly lit hallway, then up a flight of stairs and down a second hallway, through a door that led to what seemed like a small, sparsely furnished waiting room with a small desk in the corner on which stood a telephone and a pile of ledgers. The woman knocked on a door at the far end and opened it without waiting for a reply.
‘Miss Lake is here to see you, sir,’ she said, and stood aside while waving Sibyl in.
This room was just as sparsely furnished as the waiting room, but the desk was large, too large for the room, really. The man behind it rose at her entry, stretching out his hand for her to shake. He smiled.
‘Do sit down, Mademoiselle Lake,’ he said, in French, and as she did so, continued: ‘I do apologise for the mystery surrounding this meeting; I promise that it was necessary and you will understand why in due course. You may call me Mr Smith.’
Sibyl nodded, more mystified than ever.
‘… but bear with me a little while longer. Before I come to the point, I’d like to know a little more about you. You were brought to our attention because of your ability with languages. Apparently you were a godsend on the Men’s Casualty ward because of your ability to translate for the French patients as well as the German patients who were prisoners of war.’
‘You were spying on me?’
He chuckled. ‘One of my colleagues was a patient of yours. He heard you chatting with both French and German patients and was impressed – you are fluent in both languages, you speak like a native… and you were overheard telling a French patient that you spent some years in the Alsace. Is that right?’
Sibyl nodded again, and as he seemed to be waiting for an explanation, continued in perfect French, ‘After my father died my mother moved there to stay with an old school friend. I was six at the time; but I was already fluent in French because we’d had a French nanny. We lived there for six years and returned to England when my mother re-married. My stepfather is half-French. We speak a lot of French at home. Mama insists.’
‘Ah, I see. And do you also speak the local language, Alsatian?’
‘Yes, of course. I went to the local school and mostly we children spoke Alsatian. Though we always had to speak French at home. My aunt’s home.’
‘Did you enjoy your time in France?’
‘Oh, yes! I love France. My heart breaks at the thought of it in German hands. Especially the Alsace. We have had no news from our friends there since the war began, since the Occupation.’
‘Well, unfortunately it is more than an Occupation. The Alsace has been annexed by Germany, who reclaimed it almost immediately. It is now officially part of Germany. The people of Alsace are now German citizens. Probably the authorities do not allow letters to England. We are the enemy.’
Sibyl closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Of course. Of course that had happened. Obviously. But hearing it stated so bluntly: well, it hurt. It was one thing for the Alsace to fall within the boundaries known as Occupied France. But the maps she had seen had not been clear enough, they had included Alsace; France up to the Rhine. Perhaps the map-makers did not acknowledge the new German boundary. But for Germany, it would count – and for the people living within that border. It was exactly as Oncle Jean-Pierre had predicted. He, Aunt Margaux, the children, Jacques Dolch: they were all now, on paper at least, Germans. It was heart-shattering.
All of a sudden Mr Smith was speaking German. ‘You also speak fluent German. Where did you learn that?’
Sibyl was certain he already knew the answer, but she replied anyway. ‘From my grandmother. She’s Austrian, from Salzburg. She lived with us for a while when we were children. She always spoke German with us, even though she could speak English. She said that was the way to learn, by immersion in the language. She said that another language is a bridge between two cultures, an important skill. In fact, she’s staying with us right now; she fled Austria just before the war started.’
‘She is, I believe, half-Jewish?’
‘Yes. Her mother was Jewish.’
‘You have a sister?’
‘That’s right. Elena.’
‘And relatives in British Guiana?’
‘Yes: two aunts, and several cousins. The Quints. Most of the cousins signed up; they’re all in the BEF. Sometimes they come and visit us, when they have leave.’
‘And they all speak fluent German.’
‘Yes.’
The conversation came around to her training as a nurse. Here too, Mr Smith seemed to already know about her life. It was almost as if he had been spying on her. He knew details about her life that a complete stranger had no need to know.
‘I understand, Fräulein Lake, that you have a – er – a male friend? An RAF pilot, Lieutenant Grant? Are you engaged to be married?’
Sibyl blushed. What should she say?
‘Well, Lieutenant Grant and I have been – seeing each other for about a year now. But we are not engaged and have no plans to marry. If we are both alive when the war is over – if – you understand, it’s impossible to make such plans at the moment.’
‘I understand fully. Forgive my curiosity. You will understand later.’
Let me understand now, Sibyl yelled at him, but only in her mind. What is this about? How do you know all this? Why are you interrogating me?
But he had already moved on, and now he had switched back to French: ‘I’ve heard that you were particularly commendable during the bombing of the Kent and Sussex hospital in 1940. Calm and efficient, your superiors say. Thoroughly trustworthy. We made further enquiries. In particular you have a reputation as being cool-headed in times of danger – such as after that bomb attack. Self-sacrificing, hard-working, compassionate, unshakeable under pressure. Is this how you see yourself?’
‘Well – ah – I can’t say, there are other nurses just as hard-working and self-sacrificing as I am. We are all like that. It’s our training.�
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‘So I can add modesty and humility to the list of accolades.’ He chuckled. ‘Well, Mademoiselle, it might very well be that there are many other nurses just as capable as you. But we are looking at your special talent, and that is your languages. Fluent in French, German and Alsatian. That is rare, very rare for an English person. Particularly the last language, Alsatian. And this is why I wanted to have this informal talk with you. We are wondering if you would consider war work in France?’
‘Of course! This is why I applied to the Queen Alexandra – I love France. I want to see her free again; I want to be a part of anything that will liberate her.’
He nodded. ‘I’d like to speak about France again. Tell me more about your life in the Alsace, this family you lived with.’
Sibyl needed no further invitation; she spoke of her years in France with delight and yearning. She spoke of the vineyards and the harvests and the wine. She spoke of the people: Margaux and Jean-Pierre, her friends, Marie-Claire, Leon, Lucien, Victoire, Jacques.
‘They are like my own family! The children, they are my brothers and sisters!’
‘This boy, Jacques – he is not a member of the Laroche family?’
‘No. His father is Maxence Dolch, the Laroche’s winemaker. But they are all friends together. They do everything together. It breaks my heart to think that their home is in occupied France.’
‘Annexed, not occupied. Strictly speaking, their home is now in Germany.’
‘That is worse yet.’
‘So, again – you became a nurse so you could return to France, if and when we invade.’