As a further hedge against the possibility that evaders would be captured after crossing the Pyrenees, the French networks’ Spanish and Basque colleagues sought out soldiers and police officers who were sympathetic to the Allied cause, or could be blackmailed or bribed to look the other way. This often helped airmen and their guides to avoid police and military checkpoints and patrols, or hastened the aviators’ release from confinement if they had been unfortunate enough to be arrested on arrival.
Once evaders reached Spain the goal whenever possible was to get them to the British enclave at Gibraltar. The six-hundred-mile trip across the length of the Iberian Peninsula was usually made by train, with groups of evaders using identification papers and travel documents supplied by military officials stationed at the American and British consulates in larger towns near the French border, or at each nation’s embassy in Madrid. The trip south was not an easy one, for agents of both the Gestapo and the Abwehr—Germany’s military intelligence service—were extremely active in Spain.11 While they rarely resorted to violence, the German operatives would not hesitate to impede the evaders’ progress in any way they could—most often by reporting them to the Spanish authorities.
Allied personnel who reached Gibraltar were screened to ensure that they were bona fide evaders and not Axis agents. Men who passed the vetting procedure were provided with new uniforms, pocket money, and travel orders authorizing their return to England. That journey was normally made by air, aboard military transports or civilian airliners operating between Gibraltar’s small Royal Air Force field and British and American air bases outside London. Soon after arrival the now former evaders underwent longer and far more involved debriefings with MI9 or MIS-X, the British and American intelligence organizations tasked with supporting escape and evasion operations.12 The returnees were extensively interviewed about their time in France, the people they encountered, any enemy activity or installations they might have observed, and any ways they believed escape and evasion training and aids might be improved. Then, interviews completed and after a stern warning not to discuss anything about their time in France with anyone, the men were returned to their units.
FOURTEEN OF THE SEVENTEEN MEMBERS OF THE 94TH BOMB GROUP WHO reached Paris after being shot down over Le Bourget ultimately made the home run back to England by following the Pyrenees route out of France.13 The “over the mountains” group included Robert Conroy, Larry Templeton, Roscoe Greene, Kee Harrison, Floyd Watts, David Turner, Charles McNemar, Jefferson Polk, Samuel Potvin, John Carpenter, John Buice, and Joe Manos. Harry Eastman and Dick Davitt also walked out of France and into Spain, but as members of the Gunner Trio their stories require a closer look.
AFTER LEAVING INVALIDES ON AUGUST 21 HARRY AND DICK HAD RETURNED to Maud Couvé and Alice Brouard’s apartment on rue de Madrid. The following day the men were told they’d be traveling separately, and that Eastman would be the first to go. That evening he was led to the Gare d’Austerlitz, where he joined a group of nine evaders that included three members of Kee Harrison’s crew—Turner, Polk, and McNemar—who had spent their time in Paris with members of various networks.14 Three other Americans were also part of the group: technical sergeants Francis Green and Edward Ruby of the 384th Bomb Group, and Staff Sergeant Donald Harding of the 95th.15 The party was rounded out by an RAF fighter pilot and a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) tail gunner, and by four escorts provided by the Bourgogne network headed by twenty-five-year-old former soldier Georges Broussine.16
The evaders and their escorts boarded the 8 P.M. night train from Paris to Toulouse, where they arrived on the morning of August 23. After an anxious hour in the crowded station they entrained for Foix, scattered through two third-class cars. By the time their pre–World War I vintage locomotive wheezed into Foix in the early afternoon, Harry Eastman and his fellow evaders had begun to relax somewhat.17 That feeling was premature, however, for after the party left the station and started walking into the nearby woods one of the guides saw what looked like a bicycle-mounted policeman coming toward the group. A quick hand gesture sent everyone into the shrub-covered ditches lining either side of the road, where the evaders and their escorts lay as quietly as possible. When the coast seemed clear three of the guides hustled their charges out of hiding and down the road, apparently not realizing or caring that Harding, Francis Green, the Canadian gunner, and the fourth French guide had been left behind.18
Harry Eastman and his companions had little time to wonder what had become of their fellow evaders, for the remaining guides pressed doggedly on. Well after midnight the men were allowed to stop, and the group stayed under cover until a car arrived at their hiding place on the afternoon of August 25. Driven south for several hours, the evaders were eventually handed over to the man who would guide them through the mountains, and over the next five days the party made its way to and across the France-Andorra border. After a one-night stop at a small hotel in the tiny principality, Eastman and the others were on the move again on the evening of August 31, and by noon the following day had crossed the Spanish border, in the process dodging sporadic rifle fire aimed at them by border troops.
Things took a quick turn for the even worse on September 2, when the evaders and their French helpers were arrested by local police and taken to the district prison in the Catalan town of La Seu d’Urgell. As the senior officer of the group (and possibly as the result of a bribe), David Turner was paroled and he and one of the French guides immediately entrained for Barcelona, where the young American officer went straight to the British consulate. After making his report, Turner—despite his pleas that he be allowed to return to La Seu d’Urgell to be with the others—was ordered to Madrid and from there to Gibraltar. For reasons that remain unclear, on September 15 Turner was flown to Marrakesh in French Morocco. Four days later he boarded a C-47 transport bound for the RAF base at Saint Mawgan in Cornwall, and by September 21 he was enjoying his home run party at the Rougham officers club.
Eastman and the others had to wait a bit longer for their own bashes, however. As a result of Turner’s report the resident MI9 officer in Barcelona was able to get the other Allied evaders released after five days in La Seu d’Urgell jail. The men were transported to Lérida, where instead of being confined to the military stockade they were installed in the Hotel Palacio. They enjoyed the town’s hospitality for two weeks, spent one night in Saragoza, and were then moved on to Alhama de Grenada, where the MI9 man was able to interview them at length. Thanks to the efforts of a U.S. Army major named Clark—an attaché from the American consulate in San Sebastian—the enlisted men reached Gibraltar on October 2. Three days later Eastman, McNemar, and Polk were flown to Bristol, and traveled from there to Rougham by train. As it turned out, Eastman was the second member of the Gunner Trio to return to Sussex.
Dick Davitt, for his part, left the City of Light on August 24. Two days earlier, just after Harry Eastman’s departure, the young aviator had also said goodbye to Maud Couvé and Alice Brouard. Davitt was guided some three miles to the southwest, to an apartment only a few hundred yards from the Gare d’Austerlitz. He stayed with Gabrielle Wiame, the woman he knew only as “Marie,” who on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth led Davitt to the Jardin des Plantes—the vast botanical garden adjacent to the Gare d’Austerlitz. There he joined a group of evaders that included a young RAF officer who introduced himself as Peter; five Frenchmen and one woman; and, to Davitt’s surprise, three other B-17 aviators who had survived Bastille Day. First Lieutenant James Munday, a 384th Bomb Group pilot, had been shot down during the attack on Villacoublay and was still dealing with shrapnel injuries to one of his knees.19 The other two were well known to Davitt—Sam Potvin and John Carpenter of Floyd Watts’s crew, who after arriving in Paris on August 5 had sheltered with Francoise Vandevoorde and her husband, Maurice, in Fontenay-sur-Bois.20
The eleven evaders and their two guides left the Gare d’Austerlitz on the night express to Toulouse, where the next morning they boarded a wa
iting truck for the sixty-mile drive to Arignac. The small town south of Foix was the jumping-off point for the push into Andorra, which the group and two local guides began on the evening of August 25. Though things initially went well, after only a few hours of walking it became obvious that Munday’s injured knee was failing him and that the young officer would not be able to keep up. One of the local résistants offered to stay behind with him, and the rest of the group pushed on.21
After reaching Andorra the evaders and their guides spent two days in a small hotel, but for reasons that remain unclear Peter, the young RAF officer, was not with them.22 The others pressed on nonetheless, and after a week of hard walking reached the Spanish city of Manresa. From there the American airmen took a train to Barcelona, where they spent three days waiting for the next leg of their journey to be arranged. They were then driven to Madrid—presumably by Major Clark—where they found David Turner. By September 15 Davitt, Carpenter, and Potvin were in Gibraltar, and late on the eighteenth they boarded a transport bound for Saint Mawgan, like Turner making the journey via Marrakesh. On September 20 Davitt finally returned from what he jokingly referred to as his “unintentional European vacation.”23
While two members of the Gunner Trio had to walk to freedom, the third, Joe Cornwall, was the only one of the Bastille Day aviators to leave France the same way he’d arrived—by air.
THE FAREWELL LUNCH OF THE GUNNER TRIO AT INVALIDES ON SATURDAY, August 21, was followed by forty-eight hours of relative quiet in the Morin household. Georges and Denise went about their normal “concierge” duties, while Joe and Yvette spent as much time as they could in their retreat atop the Dôme church.
But late on the afternoon of Monday the twenty-third the routine was interrupted by the unexpected arrival of André Schoegel. “Petrel” was accompanied by two new evaders, twenty-five-year-old Warrant Officer Roderick A. (Roy) Scott of the RCAF and thirty-year-old Sergeant James George Antony Trusty of the RAF. The men were the pilot and mid-upper gunner, respectively, of a Handley Page Halifax II bomber of the RAF’s No. 138 (Special Duties) Squadron.24 Based at Tempsford in Bedfordshire, the unit and sister Squadron 161 specialized in covert, nighttime operations in support of European resistance movements and Allied intelligence and sabotage missions in Axis-occupied countries. Scott and his crew had been engaged in a clandestine supply-drop mission over France on the night of August 13 and were flying at very low altitude when their aircraft was hit by antiaircraft fire and then attacked by a German Bf 110 night fighter. Scott had managed to put the blazing aircraft down in a field near La Chapelle-Viel in Normandy, though two members of the seven-man crew had been killed by the enemy fire. Three more of the aviators were quickly captured, and Scott and Trusty were helped by locals until passed on to members of Turma-Vengeance. On the morning of the twenty-third Hubert and Reneé Renaudin—the same couple that had earlier aided David Turner, Harry Eastman, and Dick Davitt—put the two men on the train from Évreux to Paris, where Schoegel met them and took them to Invalides.
The arrival of the two new “guests” was not the only thing that upset the normal routine at the Morins’ home, however. Schoegel was angry to find Joe Cornwall still there, and apparently had not heard about the August 17 debacle in the Métro station or the problem “Gotha” had found with Joe’s false papers. Georges and Denise explained that the documents provided by Gabrielle Wiame had borne the official stamp of a coastal district from which all civilians had been evacuated months earlier, and repeated their suspicion that Wiame was working with the Germans.25 They also told Schoegel that “Gotha” had not returned with new papers as he had said he would, nor had they received any further instructions from anyone in the network. Only slightly mollified, Schoegel promised to look into things and get back to them as soon as he could.
The two new evaders quickly proved themselves to be welcome additions to the Morins’ household—despite the fact that their presence meant Yvette had to give up her room to them and go back to sleeping at the Merciers’ apartment. Both aviators were polite and well mannered, and more than happy to eat rabbit in any way Denise cared to make it. On their first evening at Invalides Trusty and Scott were invited to join Joe, Yvette, and the elder Morins atop the Dôme church, and over the course of subsequent visits the newcomers became as fond of the rooftop aerie as had all its previous visitors.
Unfortunately, the sense of security the lofty perch engendered led Tony Trusty to commit a security violation that was both foolish and potentially fatal for himself and the others. On his second or third visit he used a small penknife to scratch a brief message into the outer skin of the circular metal cupola covering the small dome just behind and above the altar of Saint-Louis des Invalides:
J.G.A.T.
of the RAF Visited here 1943,
When escaping to
England, having been shot down
by German A/A Fire
Though Trusty’s desire to memorialize both his survival and his presence atop one of the most famous buildings in France is understandable, the graffiti would have been a death sentence for the Morins had it been discovered and read by an enemy. That it was not borders on the miraculous.26
The elder Morins’ status as “caretakers” of Invalides certainly made them vulnerable, in that any indication that Allied evaders were being housed within the complex would have immediately focused the Germans’ suspicions on them and, by extension, on Yvette. But their unique position as “keepers of the keys” also gave Georges and Denise advance notice of special ceremonies that would bring large numbers of German or collaborationist troops onto the grounds, thereby allowing the couple to both restrict the movements of their evader guests and warn off Resistance members who might otherwise have been arriving for meetings or to pass on documents or equipment.
While many of the events were of a social nature—such as the weddings of German officers in Saint-Louis des Invalides—others were decidedly more martial. That was the case on Friday, August 27, only four days after the arrival of Scott and Trusty. Just after dawn, scores of military trucks began pulling up outside every entrance to the Invalides complex and disgorging hundreds of uniformed troops. The soldiers were not German; they were members of the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism, a collaborationist militia formed in July 1941 through the amalgamation of various right-wing parties.27 Organized and equipped as a standard German infantry regiment, the force had fought in Russia and the Balkans and the ceremony held that day in the Cour d’honneur was intended to officially mark the second anniversary of the legion’s creation, and to award medals to those who had distinguished themselves in combat. The participants had no idea, of course, that three Allied evaders were calmly playing poker less than three hundred yards from where senior German and French collaborationist officers stood on the reviewing stand.
Things were much quieter at Invalides the day after the ceremony, so much so that Joe, Yvette, Scott, and Trusty felt at ease enough to pose for Georges’s camera on the lawn in front of the Dôme church. In the photo, the four sit closely together; Roy Scott looks sheepishly at the ground, while Tony Trusty—wearing an ascot beneath his shirt and jacket and looking undeniably English—peers directly at the camera. Joe and Yvette, on the other hand, lean in toward each other, their smiles and body language speaking volumes about the depth of their feelings for each other. Their relationship was no secret to Trusty and Scott, of course, and both of the newcomers later wrote of the couple with great affection and not a little envy.
Unfortunately, Joe and Yvette received some upsetting news on the same afternoon that photo was taken. “Gotha” finally returned with revised papers for Joe, and told the airman that he, Trusty, and Scott would be leaving for Spain in “three or four days.” While the specter of yet another separation was understandably upsetting for Joe and Yvette, it turned out that the departure window “Gotha” had given them was wildly inaccurate. Indeed, it wasn’t until the evening of September 6 that a woman arrive
d to lead the three evaders to their next destination. It was a moment that Joe and Yvette had been dreading, but a last-minute examination of the aviators’ false papers led the guide to declare that the documents “Gotha” had given Joe days earlier were “still not in order,” though she apparently did not explain the problem.28 She told Joe to stay with the Morins until the issue could be sorted out, and after a round of handshakes and hugs Trusty and Scott followed her out the door. A week later both airmen were in Spain.
This latest reprieve for Joe and Yvette lasted until the evening of Wednesday, September 16, when a man sent by “Gotha” arrived at the Morins’ door accompanied by USAAF Second Lieutenant Andrew G. Lindsay and Sergeant Percival V. Matthews of the RAF. After another round of emotional goodbyes with Yvette and her parents, Joe reluctantly followed the other three men into the night.29 The escort led the evaders to a house near the Gare Saint-Lazare, where he said they would meet the guide who would accompany them to the Spanish border. But the guide never appeared, and after waiting for more than an hour the escort led Joe and the others to a different house in Paris. There the aviators were handed off to four Frenchmen, who took the evaders to Maurice Cottereau’s Café du Moulin Rouge in the northeastern suburb of Drancy. Joe and the others stayed there two nights waiting for a guide. The fact that no one appeared made Cottereau nervous and, fearing that “Gotha” was untrustworthy, on September 19 he decided to disperse the three men. Lindsay and Matthews were sent to Bobigny, another Paris suburb, while Denise Morin came to escort Joe back to Invalides.30
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