The Lost Airman

by Seth Meyerowitz

  Hindle, who so reminded Cleaver of Arthur, and Franklin got lucky. Joan Garcia Rabascall raced from Barcelona to the prison with papers for both men and removed them before the Nazis could do so.

  Arthur and Cleaver also got lucky on the drive from Figueres to Barcelona. They arrived in the sprawling, beautiful city without being stopped and ordered to show identification. Then, in a safe house, their guide suddenly told them that he had to go to the British consulate, which, like the U.S. consulate, provided papers for both escaping British and American airmen and their documents. Arthur and Cleaver had to be concerned. This was not the plan Taillandier had explained to them. They were supposed to be met by another guide in Barcelona who would have their new identifications and other paperwork on his person.

  As always, Taillandier came through for the American and the Englishman. The photos and papers did arrive, and over the course of nine days in Barcelona, Arthur and Cleaver had the option of staying in the house or moving warily around the city with their new IDs. Many Allied airmen were being harbored in Barcelona, but Arthur and Cleaver’s guide had cautioned the duo to be careful whom they befriended there. The Germans could ply unwitting airmen with liquor at any of the city’s countless cafés and bars and lure the men to a brothel. Many of them soon found themselves trussed up in the German consulate and smuggled out of Spain and on their way to a prison camp. During their time there, Arthur and Cleaver avoided trusting the wrong “friend.”

  As with all Allied airmen in Barcelona, Arthur and Cleaver were told that if they chose to go out, they must never break the city’s curfew. Historian Alberto Poveda Longo, in his book Paso Clandestino (“secret pass”), states: “[Airmen] had to respect the curfew rules. The foreigners shouldn’t have been in the street from 9 p.m. but during the summer they could be in the street until 11 p.m.”

  Once again, in Barcelona, Cleaver’s crewmen Franklin and Hindle made a mistake that Arthur and Cleaver avoided: “One day the friends decided to visit the local cinema. When the film had finished, a couple of civil guards [Spanish] were waiting for them and moved the young men to the prison.” 2 Franklin wrote that they had “broken the curfew rules . . . to visit the local cinema. We were escorted to jail through the main street, I thought with some satisfaction by the civil guard.” 3

  Their luck held, thanks once more to Joan Garcia Rabascall, who liberated them from “the small stone cell and the tiny grill window” before the Nazis could make a move. “You can imagine our relief,” Franklin added. 4

  On June 13, Arthur and Cleaver finally left Barcelona. By that time, they had to know that the Allied forces had stormed ashore along Normandy on June 6, and were craving the chance to get back into the thick of it.

  Arthur wrote tersely that they “then went to Madrid with Cleaver and 3 Belgians.” 5

  Cleaver remembered, “We were worried that German agents would seize us. Meyerowitz, a trio of Belgians, and I reached Madrid . . . We had several near-disastrous run-ins with Spanish police sympathetic to the Germans, as well as spying Gestapo agents many times. We were challenged several times.” 6

  As Taillandier’s carefully crafted escape plan for Arthur and Cleaver unfolded, the Frenchman and Morhange were fighting for their very survival in and around Toulouse.

  CHAPTER 28

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  DEATH TO FRANCE

  On June 2, 1944, about the time that Arthur and Cleaver were racing the pursuing Nazis toward the Spanish border, Taillandier, identified as a “person of interest” based on a tip from a collaborator, was approached in Toulouse’s Place du Capitole, the city’s main public square, by six Gestapo agents. He pulled out a revolver and opened fire on them.

  As crowds scattered, he dashed down several streets where he knew every turn and alley, ran into a building, and climbed the stairs to the roof. Leaping from roof to roof, he slipped away from the Germans and fled the city.

  He hid for most of June in a maquis near Quérigut, in the department of Ariège, in a rugged stretch of the Midi-Pyrénées. From the hideout, he directed Morhange ambushes and executions that “quickly scrubbed 150” Nazis and collaborators. 1

  Taillandier left on July 11, to meet in Toulouse with several of his Morhange lieutenants including Fontes, and “entrusted the command [of the maquis] to one of his deputies, André Audebaud.” 2 Accompanying Taillandier was an operative named “Georges” and twenty-four-year-old Léo Hamard, one of Taillandier’s most trusted and valiant agents. He had been with Morhange since 1942, and his experience as a police inspector had proven invaluable in their infiltration of the Vichy gendarmerie.

  As the three men drove out of the Toulouse neighborhood of Saint-Martin-du-Touch in a black Citroën, the streets teemed with Gestapo and German soldiers. The car slowed near the dam at the edge of the neighborhood and then stopped in front of a guardhouse where four Feldjägers, uniformed Nazi military policemen with Schmeisser submachine guns, approached the car.

  One of the policemen demanded that Taillandier and the others hand over their identification papers. Suspiciously eyeing the Frenchmen, he grabbed Taillandier’s card and walked over to the guardhouse to crank the field telephone inside. According to operative Pierre Saint-Laurens, Taillandier understood that he “was trapped like a rat.” 3 There was not even time to draw their pistols. He ordered Georges and Léo Hamard to run. Instead, the two jumped from the left side of the car and rushed the officers so that Taillandier could try to get away and Morhange would not lose its irreplaceable commander.

  As his two men punched and kicked the police and others swarmed them, Taillandier slipped out the right side of the Citroën and sprinted back down the street. By the time that the Germans finally overpowered his two companions, Taillandier had vanished.

  He ducked into a blacksmith’s forge, and the blacksmith told him to turn down a driveway that led to a church and an alley through which he could escape the police and Gestapo fanning out across the streets. Taillandier reached the front of the church and spotted the alley “to the left . . . the narrow passage between the wall and that of the building.” 4

  He ran halfway down the alley and then paused. He thought that he had strayed into a dead end, and before reaching the bottom of the alley, he turned back.

  He skirted the church to his right and down another passageway—only to find, Saint-Laurens writes, “the terrible surprise that he was in a cul de sac.” 5 With the harsh shouts of approaching Germans and the snarls and barks of attack dogs coming closer, Taillandier scaled a large cross next to the church and climbed onto the steeply pitched roof, flattening himself onto it as Gestapo and police rushed past the church. Once again, it looked as though “Ricardo” had eluded the Nazis.

  A window suddenly opened on the house across the street from the church. A woman’s shouts caused some of the Germans to stop and run back toward the sound.

  “There he is!” she yelled, pointing at the roof of the church. 6

  As Taillandier squeezed off several shots from his revolver, the Germans opened up with rifles, submachine guns, and Lugers. Tiles shattered as rounds ripped into the roof and slammed into Taillandier from head to toe. He tumbled from the roof, dead before he hit the street, riddled with bullets. The Gestapo dragged away his body. Days later, the long, dried-out trail of blood left by the body remained in the street, a warning to other men and women of the Resistance. The warning went unheeded.

  On August 30, 1944, in the garden of a building of Maignac Street, in Toulouse, Taillandier’s corpse was tossed by the Gestapo into a shallow ditch. A crudely lettered sign was tied to him. It read, Death to France.

  Marcel Taillandier was far more fortunate than Georges and Léo Hamard. The Germans kicked Georges to death outside the car and hauled Hamard off to Gestapo headquarters in Toulouse. For a week, he was tortured in every savage way his captors knew. Hamard would not break, never revealing informatio
n about Morhange.

  When the Gestapo realized that he would never talk, they did not end his agony with a bullet to the head. They chose instead to bury him alive.

  CHAPTER 29

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  “WELCOME BACK TO THE WAR”

  Packed into a van with the three Belgian escapees, Arthur and Cleaver endured their longest time on the road since the eight-hour drive with Andrés Fontes from Perpignan to the central Pyrénées. The van, driven by a guide who worked with the British and American consulates, made an uneventful 332-mile, seven-hour trip from Madrid southwest to the river port of Seville despite the presence of Spanish Civil Guard and army trucks and armored cars along the route.

  Arthur and Cleaver had been told that the authorities rarely stopped vehicles on the highways between the two cities. Along with Gestapo and Abwehr agents, pro-Nazi Spanish officials and military preferred to lie in wait in Seville, which was the “clearing house” where pro-Allied Spaniards planned the last leg of the journey for airmen and pilots. The final destination was the legendary British fortress “the Rock of Gibraltar,” which commanded the passage between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. If an escapee made it to Gibraltar, he was as good as home. The Nazis and their Spanish supporters knew it, too, searching every route to Gibraltar in their effort to seize any unfortunate Allied pilots and airmen.

  There was a reason that both Madrid and now Seville served as way stations for fleeing Allied airmen. Both cities were so large that it was relatively easy for escapees to either hide or walk the streets before curfew with their identification papers. Still, exploring the two cities carried risks, as Gestapo agents often trailed English-speaking men and grabbed them in alleys, took their identification papers, summoned Spanish police on the Nazi payroll, and announced that the prisoners had no papers and were going to be taken to German territory.

  In his two days in Madrid, Arthur “didn’t see any Americans.” 1 Wary of going out in public as Americans and British airmen had done in Barcelona, he decided that it was better to lie low in Madrid until they left for Seville.

  As their van neared Seville, a vast plain stretched toward the Guadalquivir River, with the city sprawling in every direction along both banks, which flowed eighty miles to the Atlantic. The van turned along the western side of the Guadalquivir amid a breathtaking blend of civil buildings and houses whose architecture ran from Roman and Moorish to neoclassical and modern.

  The deeper they headed into the city, the narrower the side streets, or “closes,” became. The driver pulled into the Triana neighborhood, the birthplace of flamenco and famous for its unique style of ceramics, a place where medieval-era apartment houses still crowded against each other. Since the fall of France, in 1940, Triana had served as a haven for Allied airmen because the neighborhood was a fervent bastion of anti-Franco, as well as anti-Nazi, sympathy. During the Spanish Civil War, working-class, Republican Triana had fiercely fought Franco’s forces before the resistance was crushed by merciless reprisals. Now the seething hatred along the river’s west bank for Franco and Hitler meant that Arthur and Cleaver would find any number of men and women to help them escape Spain.

  From Seville to Gibraltar, the usual escape route for Allied airmen was a dangerous 119-mile drive from the city to the Rock along roads heavily patrolled by the Spanish Army and the Civil Guard. Luck played a huge role if soldiers or militia stopped a car or van with escaping Allied airmen and pilots; the consulates in Barcelona had provided Arthur and Cleaver with Spanish pesos to bribe border patrols to let them cross into Gibraltar. Sometimes, though, German agents who paid police, soldiers, and Civil Guards far more than the amount the escapees could offer accompanied the authorities—especially when the Nazis were searching for a specific high-value person. Cleaver fell squarely into that category. The Gestapo knew he was in Spain and their agents were undoubtedly waiting along the road to Gibraltar with Spaniards on the take.

  Getting Cleaver to safety meant that his and Arthur’s guides would have to use a second, far more hazardous escape route, one that meant a 115-mile drive from Seville to the southwestern port of Algeciras and then a seven-mile trip by boat to Gibraltar through waters where U-boats still prowled and Spanish planes could order a vessel to turn back to Algeciras. Nazi agents were stationed all along the docks of the port to hunt for any hint of Allied airmen and pilots boarding a fishing boat, or “smack.” Vessels carrying any such escapees were frequently sunk if a U-boat was alerted in time by coded messages from onshore.

  Arthur could have opted to go with the Belgians by the easier route, entirely by car. His chances of reaching Gibraltar were far better that way. For him, however, there was no question which route he would choose. He would stay with Cleaver, running the gauntlet from Algeciras to Gibraltar by boat.

  Before dawn on Friday, June 16, a car pulled up at the safe house in Seville. Arthur and Cleaver, in worn but clean clothes and decent shoes provided by their hosts, climbed into the car, having carefully checked that they had their identification papers and their cash.

  As the car waded into the crowded streets of the city and turned south along the coastal road for the drive to Algeciras, the American and the Englishman had already traveled over a thousand miles on their winding journey from Toulouse to Seville. They knew that the final seven, from Algeciras to Gibraltar, could well prove the most nerve-racking and lethal.

  High above the shoreline of southwestern Spain, every mile on the roadway brought vistas of the sun glinting off the Atlantic. As always along the highways leading south, cars, vans, and trucks were pulled over by police and militia for inspection of travelers’ papers, an unnerving sight for the American and the Englishman, who both tensed every time an official-looking car or a military vehicle suddenly appeared alongside or behind them.

  Approaching Algeciras near 7 a.m., some three hours after departing Seville, the car hit traffic that had come to a near standstill. Several police cars and army half-tracks were parked on both sides of the highway, and police officers and Civil Guards, in dark blue uniforms and German-issue jackboots, and toting German submachine guns, were questioning the occupants of every car, van, and truck. Every now and then they waved vehicles to pull over to the side and ordered the drivers and passengers to step outside. Most ominously, several men in fedoras and dark suits challenged travelers. Arthur had seen enough of their type in Toulouse to recognize them instantly as Gestapo agents.

  The presence of Nazis would spoil any attempt to bribe Spaniards working with the Nazis up ahead. While Arthur and Cleaver did have the correct identification to pass through “neutral Spain,” this wouldn’t matter if the Spanish police and soldiers looked the other way as the Gestapo seized the identification documents. Cleaver’s face and actual name were on his papers, and the Toulouse Gestapo wanted him back. Arthur had no doubt that the Germans would extradite him along with the RAF pilot. A Jewish airman carrying a concealed weapon would not fare well back in Nazi territory.

  The turn of Arthur, Cleaver, and their driver came after an interminable wait of over an hour. Even if they got through the checkpoint, they had to be at the dock before nightfall because the U-boats would surface only at night to recharge their batteries and replenish the air inside or to stop and board a suspicious vessel. By day, it was too dangerous for the submarines to surface, with Allied fighter planes from the airfield at Gibraltar combing the waters below. Under the relative cover of darkness, sometimes a U-boat simply sank ships that matched the descriptions from Nazi agents dockside at Algeciras.

  At the order of a Civil Guard, Arthur, Cleaver, and the driver handed over their papers. The Spaniard looked them over and returned them. He waved the car forward.

  No matter how much relief filled Arthur and Cleaver, the feeling ebbed quickly. Nazi agents were waiting along the port’s docks, studying every man and woman there.

  The car traveled down se
veral streets that were filled with cafés and shops and turned onto the Avenida del Carmen, the large commercial roadway running along the waterfront. Spanish Navy destroyers were anchored at large piers, and countless freighters and fishing vessels of all shapes and sizes clogged the harbor. Directly east across the Bay of Gibraltar, the massive algae-flecked, granite face of the Rock jutted from dark blue, almost violet waters, a small bank of fog covering the summit, where the British fortress stood. Freedom lay within sight of Arthur and Cleaver, but running the gauntlet to Gibraltar promised to be seven of the longest miles of both men’s lives.

  The driver stopped in front of a dilapidated fishing boat with peeling red and green paint and barnacles encrusting the hull just above the waterline. A rusty crane and winch hovered above the stern, and patched-up nets were fastened to the gunwales. Surprisingly, the vessel’s engines were already running and humming strongly, creating a large backwash from the propellers at the stern.

  Arthur and Cleaver sprang from the car and hustled up a swaying gangplank and onto the vessel. As instructed, they did not look around for watchful Nazi agents, avoiding any movement that could arouse suspicion. The car had left by the time they turned around.

  Within a few minutes, the captain, standing in the wheelhouse, throttled the craft into reverse near 9 a.m. and eased it from the pier and into the channel. As with all Allied escapees on a fishing boat, Arthur and Cleaver were handed woolen sailor’s watchcaps and oily smocks that reeked of grease and fish.