Arthur waited as one of the Nazis demanded his identification card and papers. The German cocked his head, scowled at Arthur, and shouted a second time for the papers as heads turned toward them. Waving the clipboard while pointing to a piece of paper, the Gestapo agent pointed at Arthur until he showed a sudden understanding. Carefully, he opened his coat, reached into the lining pocket, slowly took out his card and papers, and handed them over.
The Germans pored over his photo and documents, staring back at him and then to the photo several times. Arthur did not stir, keeping his hands in plain sight and straining to keep his face blank. Then, finally, one of the agents handed him back the papers.
Arthur stepped past the Nazis cautiously—again, hurried movements could attract unwanted scrutiny—and headed toward the long line of doors at the terminal’s exit as one of the Germans bellowed for the next person in line.
Outside the station, people filed toward city buses or down the broad boulevard de Marengo on their way home before curfew. Taillandier, in his black fedora and expensive black coat, met Arthur in front of the station, whose lofty Romanesque facade was decorated with twenty-six colorful coats of arms cut into the stone and representing each town the original station had served in 1856. Near the mammoth clock, another gargantuan red banner with a swastika was hung, flapping in the wind. Taillandier glowered for an instant at the flag.
After about a forty-minute walk from Matabiau, Taillandier led Arthur onto another expansive street, the boulevard Deltour, crowded on both sides by three-story brick town houses and apartment buildings, many of them with ground-floor storefronts, cafés, and restaurants. Several of the buildings were mansions that had been passed down from one generation to the next.
The two men picked their way along the crowded sidewalks past a stunning granite hotel with gilded doors and giant arched windows. Somewhere behind them, Taillandier’s men followed. Taillandier turned up the steps of a town house at 96, boulevard Deltour and rapped the brass door knocker. A young woman in a mauve blouse and dark skirt answered, smiled at Taillandier and Arthur, and let them inside. Before she closed the door, she looked up and down the street to make sure the men had not been tailed.
She introduced herself as Mademoiselle Thoulouse, daughter of the house’s owner, M. E. Thoulouse, who owned a paint store in the city center and would be home soon to meet Arthur and Taillandier. She was Taillandier’s chief supplier of stolen ration books, a wizard in the murky, dangerous black market.
Unlike most of his previous stops, the American airman would not be concealed in an attic or a shed, but would be hiding in plain sight as Georges Lambert, M. E. Thoulouse’s new assistant at the paint store. Although the Resistance preferred to arrange escapes for downed Allied pilots and airmen as quickly as possible, the snow and ice choking the trails from October to late May created virtually impassable conditions even for a man in top shape. With his back injury, Arthur was not yet ready for the rigors posed by a trek across treacherous mountain passes even if it were summer. Taillandier not only needed to protect him by hiding him longer than usual, but also could not afford to put other escapees across the mountain routes in additional danger of being slowed down by an injured comrade. Arthur would have to stay in Toulouse until his back had healed or until the Germans got too close.
Every day, Arthur would have to leave the house to sweep the business’s floors, dust the shelves, stock and restock the shelves, and run any number of errands for his “boss.” He would have a comfortable bedroom on the second floor, an arrangement that would raise few suspicions, as Toulouse store owners often provided room and board for employees. He would take his meals with the family, and Morhange would provide him with a ration card so that he would not deplete the family’s own meager stores of rationed food. Like every other citizen, he was to stand and wait in long lines at nearby grocery markets and hope that the merchants did not run out of food before he got his allotted share.
The ruse Arthur was expected to play was daunting. One misstep, and he jeopardized everyone. Taillandier was placing enormous trust in him.
He was told to rest for a day or two before starting his job. Meanwhile, the Thoulouses began telling neighbors that they had hired a deaf mute named Georges, who came from Algiers and was a Soulac-sur-Mer resident seeking work in Toulouse. His limp came from a “farm accident” that prevented him from doing agricultural work for a while. No one outside his Resistance friends could ever suspect that his chronic limp was actually the result of a parachute jump from a burning B-24.
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While Arthur prepared for his new role, events that would place him in severe peril were taking shape in Bordeaux. The Gestapo, tipped off by informers and double agents, was closing in on Dr. Robert Neel—the head of Brutus in the Bordeaux region—and Jean-Pierre Dupin, and were searching for Dr. Pierre Auriac, Georges Tissot, and other operatives of the network. The Nazis had also gotten their hands on a Brutus courier who had documents with names of several network leaders and regional chiefs. Prominent on those lists were Pierre and Gisèle Chauvin.
At a little before 11 a.m. on February 20, 1944, Neel strolled into the Café des Arts in Bordeaux, found a small, white-clothed table near the front window, and tried not to appear too anxious as he peered at the entrance. He was supposed to meet with a courier and another Brutus agent, a young French naval officer. The brasserie was already packed with people taking an early lunch. Many sipped coffee, as the café, frequented by Germans and locals alike, was one of the few spots in the city where the brew at least tasted better than the watery mess that passed for coffee anywhere else in Bordeaux.
As the minutes passed, neither man came through the door. Neel remained outwardly calm, but tension seeped through him. Something was wrong. Finally, he rose from the table and left the café. Historian Bernard Boyer writes, “He [the naval officer] would not come to the appointment given to him by his superior, Dr. Robert Neel, at the Café des Arts.” 2 Earlier that morning, the Gestapo had tried to arrest the officer, but he had put up a fight, taking down two agents with his revolver before dying at a military hospital from his wounds. He had been dead for hours before Neel went to the café.
Neel headed down the street toward the small office where he and his operatives met in secret. Boyer relates, “The head of the Bordeaux region, wanting to do too much, then made a mistake: he rushes to the [office] at Tondu Street . . .” 3
Waiting there for Neel were four French police officers who were collaborators and part of a special antiterror unit. They seized him and turned him over to the Gestapo.
The search for his colleagues Jean-Pierre Dupin, Dr. Pierre Auriac, and Georges Tissot was under way. The Gestapo was also about to pounce on Pierre and Gisèle Chauvin.
CHAPTER 15
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THE GESTAPO AT THE DOOR
At 7 a.m. on February 27, 1944, in Lesparre, the ringing doorbell and sharp knocks brought Simone Blanchard, the Chauvins’ maid, to the front door of the house. Upstairs in the dining room near the wood stove and still clad in her dressing gown, Gisèle wondered who was on her stoop so early. The pharmacy was not yet open, as almost anyone in Lesparre would have known, and she and Pierre were not expecting any new “guests.” Pierre, who was planning to visit several patients on his motorcycle, was in the children’s bedroom talking with his mother-in-law and helping the children to get dressed.
Simone opened the door to find three well-dressed men. Sneering, one introduced himself and his companions as “Dupont, Durand, and Dubois.” Despite their French names, something seemed off about them, and Simone hesitated. In that instant they pulled out pistols, pushed into the house, and grabbed her. She screamed to alert Pierre and Gisèle and struggled for a moment to try to break their grip, but quickly stopped, realizing that they were Gestapo and that resistance was useless.
As the cla
mor moved up the stairs toward the dining room, Pierre instinctively took a step to join his wife there, but stopped. He and Gisèle had discussed what they might do in a situation like this and had agreed that if one of them could escape capture and alert the rest of the Brutus Network that the Gestapo was onto them, that’s what they had to do. As hard as it would be, they had to do it.
Though he despised leaving the house, he realized he had no choice. He climbed out the children’s bedroom window and onto the roof above the vacant pigsty and jumped to the backyard.
As more Gestapo arrived in dark sedans and poured into the house, several Germans emerged through the back door and fanned out across the small yard. It did not take long to find the doctor’s hiding spot, haul him to his feet, and begin a harsh interrogation on the spot.
Inside, the three agents shoved the ashen-faced Simone upstairs and into the dining room, where Gisèle waited. One of the Nazis pointed his pistol at her and growled, “You will come with us!”
Upstairs from Gisèle, the Germans had rounded up the rest of the family. The three children and Gisèle’s mother, fifty-eight-year-old Mercédes Lacombe, who lived with them, were in the master bedroom. Gisèle, knowing there was no chance of escape, was determined to delay the Nazis long enough for her mother to destroy the Brutus paperwork, fake ID cards, communiqués, codes, and other damning evidence hidden in an armoire conveniently placed close to the bedroom’s fireplace for just such a moment.
Gisèle forced a slight smile at them. She insisted that if they were to take her away for questioning, proper German gentlemen would first allow her to bathe and change.
After a brief discussion, the head agent nodded brusquely to her and told her to make it fast. Gisèle had other ideas. The moment she saw the young agent assigned to stand guard between the open doors of the bathroom and the bedroom, she improvised a plan. The other men pounded down the stairs to join the rough interrogation of Pierre. Gisèle tried to ignore the shouts from below.
Mercédes Lacombe watched the guard, anticipating that her daughter would try to divert his attention. Mercédes, a patriot like her daughter and Pierre, knew the drill—whoever was closest to the papers at such a moment was responsible for destroying them. If the Gestapo found the Brutus documents, torture and possible execution awaited Gisèle, Pierre, and herself. The fate of the children would be anyone’s guess. Seizure of the papers would also doom Arthur Meyerowitz and the other airmen Brutus was helping.
As soon as she felt the young Nazi’s eyes on her, Gisèle began filling the tub, slowly unbuttoned her blouse, then slipped out of her skirt. She knew that it would be enough to hold his attention. Turning her back to him, she finished undressing and stepped into the tub. Leaning against the doorframe, mesmerized, the agent watched her clean herself with the warm, soapy water.
Mercédes, less than six feet from the guard peering into the bathroom, called out to the agent and asked if she could light a fire because the children were cold. He did not even turn from the bathroom, staring at Gisèle, and snapped, “Oui.”1
Mercédes hastily lit the bedroom’s fireplace, removed the papers from the armoire, and tossed them into the blaze as fast as she could. Sensing that her daughter would step from the tub shortly and that the Nazi agent might turn and see what the grandmother was doing at the fireplace, she slipped over to Patrick’s crib, picked him up, cradled him in one arm, and used her free hand to stuff the last few papers into his diaper.
When Gisèle finished dressing, Mercédes, who was crying, came over to her and held up Patrick for his mother to kiss for what both women believed was the final time. Nine-year-old Jean-Claude and six-year-old Monique rushed up to hug their mother, who blinked back tears. The German who had watched her in the bathroom tore Gisèle from her children and escorted her down the stairs and outside to the waiting Gestapo sedans.
Although she could not see her neighbors looking through shutters at the scene, she felt their eyes on her. Most, she knew, were terrified for the Chauvins. She did not dare glance in the direction of Pierre and Mimi Delude’s house, just across the street from the Chauvins and in the same block of buildings as Gestapo headquarters. She prayed that they were not next.
As the agents opened the rear passenger door of a sedan and ordered her inside, she stiffened at the sight of Pierre, whose face was battered, being shoved into another car. She suspected that it was likely her last glimpse of her husband and that she would never see her mother, her children, or her home again.
Having found no evidence in the house, the Gestapo left Gisèle’s mother, the three children, and Simone behind and sped off to the Villa Calypso with Gisèle, who knew what awaited her there. It is uncertain whether the Gestapo took Pierre just across the street to their Lesparre headquarters or elsewhere, but he was not brought to the same spot as his wife. The fate of Arthur, Brutus, and the other Allied fighters helped by the Chauvins lay in how the couple stood up to their coming ordeal.
CHAPTER 16
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HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
The news that the Gestapo and the police had shattered Brutus and arrested its leaders spread throughout southern France. In London and in Algiers, where Free French and British intelligence units had set up shop after the Allied invasion of North Africa, the fallout from the February 1944 ambushes in Toulouse and Bordeaux was alarming. If Jean-Pierre Dupin, Gisèle Chauvin, and other captured Brutus agents cracked under torture, the Nazis would surely show up at the homes of the network’s other associates.
By early March 1944, Arthur had learned to play his part well. He turned into Georges Lambert every time he left M. E. Thoulouse’s old, three-story stone house at 96, boulevard Deltour. Neighbors usually greeted the handsome young man with a wave or a smile, but not with words. As far as they knew, Georges was a deaf mute from Algiers and a Soulac-sur-Mer resident who was visiting Toulouse from the coastal town.
As Arthur’s confidence and ability to feign deafness and a complete lack of speech grew, he started to explore Toulouse. He wasn’t sightseeing, however, but instead doing reconnaissance. In briefings on how pilots and airmen were to seek help and conduct themselves if shot down, lecturers had told crewmen that if they were presented with any opportunity to reconnoiter enemy positions/movements or to gather potentially useful information about the German forces and targets for Allied bombers, they were to take it. Later, if they escaped from France, they were expected to write down their observations for American and British intelligence officers.
When he was not helping out at Thoulouse’s paint store during his first few Sundays in the city, the American walked among the crowds of the grand Place du Capitole. Passing chapels, churches, Gothic cathedrals, and splendid old mansions such as the sprawling Hôtel d’Assézat, he noted the faces and morale of the thousands of German troops occupying Toulouse. He strolled along the Canal du Midi, which connected the Garonne River to the Mediterranean, and made a mental note that the Pont Neuf and other railway bridges across the river offered inviting targets for bombers. He did the same every time he spotted German supply depots and barracks.
He was somewhat surprised at either how young or how old many of the soldiers were. To Arthur, many of the Germans looked as though they had served in World War I. He was right. Nazi casualties on the Eastern Front against the Soviets were staggering, forcing the Germans to press teenagers and old veterans into service.
Arthur found a city swarming with Germans always looking over their shoulders for any hint of Resistance operatives about to launch an ambush or peering skyward for any sign of Allied bombers. For the first few weeks of March 1944, the Allies bombed targets outside the city, but not Toulouse itself. All of that was about to change as the countdown to the invasion of Fortress Europe began in earnest.
Plastered on the walls of buildings all over Toulouse were posters urging citizens to turn in Jewish neighbors to the
authorities and depicting them as half rat, half human. Arthur did not have to read French to understand the savage messages on those placards. No matter how many times he viewed them, anger simmered inside him. Even worse, many times he stopped in his tracks as the Gestapo dragged men, women, and children from apartment buildings and shops or simply grabbed them on the streets. The Germans’ shouts of “Juden!” pealed through the air, and Arthur could do nothing except watch as the Nazis pummeled the men and sometimes the women with fists, jackboots, and batons. The beatings stopped only when a truck rolled up and the Gestapo tossed the Jews into the back. Their next stop was the train station and a long, hopeless journey northeast to the concentration camps. His head throbbing from the scenes, Arthur yearned to get back into the fight.
Wherever he went in the city, swastikas surrounded him. Not only were Nazi flags draped above the doorways of every public building, but they also fluttered from every flagpole. Banners with the loathsome symbol were affixed to streetlamps and trees. Giant gilded brass eagles whose talons grasped lightning bolts and swastikas were attached to walls throughout Toulouse. In every corner of the city, there was no escaping the Nazis’ emblems of occupation.
Arthur learned that life in occupied Toulouse meant shortages of food and virtually every consumer good. For all but well-connected citizens or those with access to the black market, rationed food was poorly or indifferently distributed. Malnourishment, especially among children and the elderly, was rampant. The Germans seized 20 percent of all crops, meat, and dairy products from the farmland outside the city. Making matters worse, fertilizer and gas for farm vehicles were in short supply, hampering production because farmers had to use their own muscle or spindly old horses to work the fields. Near-empty shelves were common in every food store Arthur entered.
The Lost Airman Page 15