Escape from Paris

by Stephen Harding

  After saying a surprisingly emotional goodbye to the Rebours family, Joe had hopped on the bicycle’s rear seat and he and the courier had pedaled to the man’s home in Évreux. The following thirty-six hours had passed with agonizing slowness for Joe, because for security reasons he was not informed where he would next be going, or when. Finally, early on the morning of the twenty-second, his host had told him to gather his few belongings and they both had set off again on the tandem bicycle. It was only when they arrived at the train station and the courier handed him a third-class ticket to Paris that Joe had realized he was bound for the French capital. Just inside the station’s main entrance the man had pointed out the Renaudins and whispered that they would guide Joe from that point on. After a quick handshake and a muttered “bonne chance,” the man had turned and hurried away.

  Joe had been focused on the French couple the courier had pointed out to him and had not initially paid attention to the three young and rather anxious-looking men sitting near them. But as he’d gotten closer he’d recognized Davitt, Eastman, and Turner—all of whom he’d assumed had made it back to Rougham after the Le Bourget raid. The sudden realization that he was no longer on his own, that he was about to be reunited with his two best friends, had brought the radiant smile to his face. And when the other members of the Gunner Trio had seen Joe, their first impulse had been to jump up and slap him on the back. They hadn’t, of course, because any demonstration of surprise or welcome—especially if accompanied by an outburst of raucous English—would have alerted the nearby German soldiers and doomed the Americans and their French escorts. Instead, the airmen had limited themselves to winks and smiles.

  An hour later, as the Renaudins and their charges settled into their seats aboard the train bound for Paris’s Gare Saint-Lazare, Joe realized his outlook was the most positive it had been since the moment he’d taken to his parachute eight days earlier. He’d survived the death of Salty’s Naturals, and had so far managed to avoid capture by the Milice or the Germans. Although he knew many things could still go very wrong, he had been impressed by the skill and professionalism of the French helpers he’d met so far, and the fact that he’d be traveling with Davitt and Eastman—at least for the time being—buoyed his spirits more than he would have expected.

  And, Joe admitted to himself, there was another reason for the lift in his spirits. Jeff Dickson’s description of life in prewar Paris had piqued his interest. While Joe knew the City of Light must certainly have darkened considerably under German occupation, he was excited by the idea of actually seeing the French capital for himself, even if only for a few days. He couldn’t take in the sights like a peacetime tourist, of course, but with luck maybe he’d be able to get around a bit, see a few things, and store up a couple memories of a place he’d likely never visit again.

  As his train rumbled southeastward through rolling farmland dotted with small towns, Joe could not have imagined just how life-changing his time in Paris would turn out to be.

  THOUGH JOE CORNWALL DIDN’T KNOW IT, HIS CREWMATE LARRY TEMPLETON had also found shelter with members of Turma-Vengeance and was already in the French capital.

  Following his escape from Salty’s Naturals, the tail gunner ended up spending the rest of July 14, that night, and most of the following day hidden in a clump of foliage, sleeping and occasionally eating chocolate from his escape box. At sunset on the fifteenth he decided it was time to move, so he set off toward the southeast. A few miles of walking brought him to a farmhouse, which he watched for more than an hour from a convenient hiding place. Templeton eventually decided to try his luck, and as he walked toward the building a young man came around it from the other side and stopped, obviously startled, when he saw the aviator. Templeton motioned for a drink of water, and the Frenchman said, “English?” Templeton responded that he was American, and the man motioned him into the house, where Templeton was offered a chair and given a glass of rough red wine.

  After about ten minutes in the house, the man motioned the gunner outside and pointed toward a road about a quarter mile away, miming that Templeton should follow the road to the east. After thanking his host, the aviator set off in the indicated direction. As he rounded a curve about an hour later he realized that the figure coming toward him on a bicycle was a German soldier, his rifle slung over his back and his helmet dangling by its buckled chin strap from a handlebar. Templeton was still dressed in his olive-drab, one-piece flying overalls and still had blood on his face from the gash on his forehead, and was certain he was about to be captured. But the fading evening light apparently helped hide his appearance, for the German rode past without a second glance.

  Templeton kept walking through the night, and soon after dawn on the sixteenth he left the road and followed a narrow lane toward the lights of a small house. Still cautious, he watched the building for an hour. Then, deciding it was safe, he knocked on the door and waited a few anxious moments until a man the gunner judged to be in his midthirties slowly opened it and peered out. Templeton pointed to himself and said “American” several times, and was invited in. The man, his wife, and their four children were in the middle of breakfast, and they asked the aviator to join them. After the meal the man indicated that he was about to leave for work, and that Templeton should stay and sleep until he came back that evening. Understandably tired from his cross-country jaunt, Templeton agreed. That evening, after having joined the family for supper, the airman got up to leave but the man again asked him to stay, this time adding that he would help him to evade capture by the Germans.

  Templeton ended up staying with the family until Sunday the eighteenth. That morning, several young Frenchmen appeared on bicycles, one of which was provided to Templeton. The group rode about fifteen miles to another house, where they spent the night. On the morning of the nineteenth Templeton and two of the Frenchmen cycled to a nearby railway station, where Second Lieutenant Roscoe Greene—the bombardier who had bailed out of Kee Harrison’s aircraft before its crash-landing—joined the group. The Americans had not previously been told their destination, and it was with a mixture of anxiety and excitement that they boarded the train for Paris with their escorts. Templeton later paraphrased his ambivalent feelings at the moment of departure as, essentially, “Sure, the city’s crawling with Krauts, but it’s Paris!”

  THE AVIATORS BEING SHEPHERDED BY TURMA-VENGEANCE IN THE AFTERMATH of the Bastille Day raid were not the only 94th Bomb Group crewmen who would spend time in Paris, for other networks were also providing transportation to the French capital.

  Although three of the four Rougham-based B-17s lost on that fateful July 14 went down within a relatively small 140-square-mile “box” in the east-central section of northern France’s Eure department, the military importance of the greater Normandy region to both the Germans and the Allies ensured that several French Resistance networks were represented in the area. In addition to Turma-Vengeance, the most active réseaux in terms of aiding Allied aviators brought down in Europe were the Bourgogne (Burgundy) and Comète (Comet) lines. All three organizations normally funneled evaders through Paris, and which of the networks provided assistance to a particular airman was essentially a matter of luck. If the aviator were fortunate enough to encounter friendly civilians—rather than Germans, the Milice, or collaborators—he would be passed on to the réseau with which the civilians or their trusted confidants were affiliated.

  For Kee Harrison’s navigator, Second Lieutenant Robert Conroy, and Technical Sergeant John Buice of Floyd Watts’s crew, for example, that first encounter led to different cells of the Comète line, and both were moved to Paris before onward movement to England. But for six of the sixteen men of the 94th Group who survived the July 14 downing of their aircraft and managed to evade capture, it was the Bourgogne network that was to provide the “home run” to the United Kingdom via the French capital. Harrison and two members of his crew, Technical Sergeant Charles McNemar and Staff Sergeant Jefferson Polk, were collected by members of
the réseau, as were Technical Sergeant Samuel Potvin and Staff Sergeant John Carpenter of Watts’s crew. Watts himself was also sheltered by Bourgogne members, but not until after they’d satisfied themselves the aviator wasn’t a German spy.

  AS WATTS FLOATED TO EARTH ON JULY 14, THE FARTHEST THING FROM HIS mind was whether he would be able to contact a resistance cell. Instead, the young pilot was focused on the flaming hulk of his Fortress as it arced like a deadly comet into the city of Louvres. He watched in horror as the bomber slammed into what looked like an industrial area and exploded, the detonation quickly followed by the emergence of a greasy black pillar of smoke that looked for all the world like a massive funeral pyre.18

  Watts landed in a wheat field not far from the town, and immediately dumped his harness and Mae West. Some French farm workers provided him with food and civilian clothes, and after spending the night in a haystack he inadvertently walked in the wrong direction—and right into Louvres. He passed his bomber’s crash site, which was surrounded by German troops and several dozen curious civilians, and finally decided to enter a shop and ask for assistance. The premises he chose turned out to be a bicycle store, and when he spoke to the clerk in English the man motioned to him to sit down and wait. The Frenchman hurried off, and minutes later returned with a young woman who introduced herself as Jacqueline.19 Her English was quite good, and she assured Watts that she knew people who would help him. What the young woman didn’t share with the young American was the name of her réseau—it was Bourgogne—and the fact that the organization was about to put him to a test.

  Just after dark, Watts was taken to an abandoned rock quarry outside the city and told he would have to stay for at least ten days in a dank, wet cave that had once served as a storage area for tools. The French helpers watched the aviator closely as he took in the amenities—a rough cot, a small oil lantern, and a bucket to be used as a latrine—and when Watts did not protest his companions smiled, slapped him heartily on the back and left. After a somewhat uncomfortable night, Watts was surprised when the helpers returned the following morning and took him to the home of the bicycle shop clerk, a man named Bartholomeux. Though the house was small the accommodations were far more agreeable than they had been at the quarry, and Watts realized that by telling him he would have to remain in the cave for an extended period the helpers had been trying to determine if he were a genuine evader. A German agent pretending to be a downed Allied airman would not have wanted to be isolated and out of communication with his handlers for so long, whereas a genuine evader would accept the conditions as a necessary hardship on the journey out of Occupied France.

  Having passed the test, Watts was moved further down the evasion line. He would spend three weeks sheltering with another helper before being reunited with radio operator Sam Potvin and ball turret gunner John Carpenter. All eight members of Watts’s crew who’d survived the destruction of their B-17 would eventually make the long journey back to England via Paris.20

  THE TRIP INTO THE FRENCH CAPITAL WAS AN OBVIOUSLY PERILOUS JOURNEY for all of the 94th Bomb Group airmen, no matter which escape line was managing their travel.

  There were really only three ways for an evader and his helpers to reach Paris from the countryside—by boat, on the River Seine; by road; or by rail. Given the political and military importance of the greater Paris metropolitan area to the Germans, all three were closely monitored. The first two were especially difficult, however.

  Traffic on the Seine was largely confined to vessels carrying either military equipment or other strategically important cargoes, so small patrol boats manned by German troops were active day and night. The few nonmilitary vessels still plying the river with commercial freight were certain to be stopped at some point, with the Germans checking the credentials of everyone on board, going through cargo manifests, and often carrying out thorough searches of the vessel’s accommodation spaces and holds. Moreover, those areas along the river where boats and barges loaded and unloaded—both within Paris and outside the city—were subject to random inspection by troops and civilian police. Though the crews of the commercial craft were more than willing to smuggle certain goods, mainly food and coal, virtually all drew the line at covertly moving people. It was an easy decision to make, for if caught with illicit goods the usual punishment was a fine and confiscation of the contraband. If apprehended attempting to transport a résistant or downed Allied aviator, on the other hand, the very least a boatman could expect was severe interrogation followed by a one-way ticket to a concentration camp.

  Helpers attempting to move an evader to Paris by road also faced significant challenges, not the least of which was that by the summer of 1943 gasoline shortages had reduced civilian traffic on French roadways to a trickle. While doctors, some farmers, local police, and other people deemed “essential” by the Germans were allocated a certain amount of fuel, most civilians who owned vehicles and could still afford to maintain them had long since converted their cars, trucks, or delivery vans to run on gases generated by burning wood or coal. The scarcity of civilian traffic, coupled with the fact that the roadways leading to the French capital were studded with both fixed and mobile checkpoints, essentially guaranteed that nonmilitary vehicles would be stopped at least once and their occupants’ identity documents closely examined. The slightest suspicion on the part of the soldier or gendarme that something was amiss would usually result in a thorough search of the vehicle, and often in the detention of the driver and any passengers.

  The third method of transporting evaders to Paris, and from the capital to other locations, certainly also had its drawbacks. The railway stations in most larger cities were continuously patrolled by either German troops, the Milice, or civilian police, and arriving and departing passengers were subject to spot checks and random searches. Gestapo agents, as well as members of the Wehrmacht military police, also carried out document checks aboard the trains themselves. Moreover, German military personnel used the civilian rail system to move around the country, and while many trains had carriages reserved especially for the occupiers’ use, it was common for civilians to find themselves in the same compartment with uniformed Germans. Conversations between victor and vanquished were understandably rare, of course, but they did occur. Because far more Germans spoke French than did Allied aviators—especially American airmen—there was always the risk that an evader might be tripped up simply because he was unable to respond to a German’s query. To forestall just such a potentially disastrous occurrence, airmen were instructed that in the event a German or unknown French person attempted to speak with them, the correct response was to feign deafness. Somewhat ironically, the fact that French railways were becoming an increasingly frequent target of Allied air attacks meant that a journey usually lasting two hours might stretch to six or eight if the train had to be diverted around a bombed station or rail yard, prolonging the time an evader had to maintain both his silence and his composure. And, of course, there was also the chance that the train carrying the airman and his helpers could itself become the focus of an Allied attack.

  Despite these drawbacks, those escape lines that used Paris as a central collection point for Allied evaders preferred to move the airmen and their helpers by rail, rather than take a chance on the River Seine or the roads. Most French civilians who needed to travel had no choice but to do it by rail, and German-imposed curfews and blackout regulations meant that passenger trains normally ran only during the daylight hours. That, in turn, meant that carriages traveling to and from Paris were usually quite full—especially in the early morning and late afternoon. Evaders were thus better able to blend in with other passengers en route, and the vast numbers of people crowding the capital’s main stations made it that much harder for the Germans and the police to closely examine peoples’ identity and travel documents. In addition, there was an active resistance movement within the SNCF—the state-run railway company.21 Rail workers could thus often be counted upon to provide the various escape
networks with such useful information as which trains were the focus of special police interest on a given day, the best ways to surreptitiously enter and leave particular stations, or even the names of soldiers or police who could be bribed or blackmailed into looking the other way.

  Although the various réseaux did all they could to ensure the security of evaders and their helpers during their rail journeys, the airmen themselves were also held responsible for their own safety and that of their escorts. At some point before traveling to the station the aviators would be briefed—either vocally or via hand signals, depending on the participants’ language skills—on what they should and shouldn’t do during the trip. In addition to feigning deafness should someone question them or attempt to engage them in casual conversation, the evaders were told not to sleep during the trip so they wouldn’t awake suddenly and inadvertently speak English. They were instructed to stay in the same carriage as their escort, but cautioned to sit separately. That would allow them to follow the helper’s lead in the event they had to leave the train earlier than planned, but would also reduce the chance that the arrest of one would also compromise the other. Upon arrival at their destination, the airmen were told, their escort would pass them off to someone else. For security reasons the escort would not normally know the identity of the new contact, so the evader would be told to calmly leave the train and walk to a certain part of the station. There the airmen was to look for someone displaying a specific attribute—wearing a particular color dress, for example, or holding a certain book—and when that person left the station, the evader was to follow at a distance.