Escape from Paris

by Stephen Harding

  The airman’s unexpected return led to an understandably joyous reunion with Yvette, though her parents cautioned the couple that Joe would likely be leaving again as soon as his onward travel could be arranged. But that process was slowed considerably by the Turma-Vengeance network’s lingering suspicions about both “Marie” and “Gotha” and, by extension, of other résistants with whom the two worked.31 The possibility that the Germans had penetrated the Comète, Bourgogne, or Visigoth lines—or worse, had agents within Turma-Vengeance itself—prompted someone above the Morins in the network’s hierarchy to start looking for a more secure way to get Joe out of France. That decision turned out to be good news for the airman and Yvette, because it allowed them to spend nearly a month more together. And during that time the couple made a momentous decision.

  Joe and Yvette had pledged themselves to one another early on in their relationship, vowing that they would find a way to be together when the war ended. But following Joe’s September 19 return to Invalides the couple decided to consecrate their relationship with an official engagement. Joe therefore formally asked Georges and Denise for their daughter’s hand in marriage, with the ceremony to be performed as soon as possible after the liberation of France. The elder Morins happily gave their consent, and the couple’s betrothal was blessed by Saint-François-Xavier’s charismatic Monsignor Georges Chevrot, himself a résistant.32 Joe, Yvette, Georges, and Denise all understood that fate might very well delay the hoped-for union far longer than any of them could then imagine, but that knowledge did nothing to dampen the joy the engagement brought them.

  News that arrived at Invalides on October 15, on the other hand, did add a bittersweet note to Joe and Yvette’s happiness. The airman’s onward journey had finally been arranged, and he would be leaving the following afternoon.

  WHEN SUSPICIONS ABOUT “MARIE” AND “GOTHA” SENT MEMBERS OF Turma-Vengeance looking for alternate ways of getting Joe Cornwall out of France, André Schoegel put them in contact with a member of the Jade-Fitzroy network who went by the nom de guerre “Trellu.” It was a providential meeting, for the twenty-six-year-old former soldier—whose real name was Pierre Hentic—was arguably the man best qualified to make Joe’s home run a reality.

  After the fall of France Hentic had cofounded Jade-Fitzroy, which was allied directly with Britain’s MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service) rather than Charles de Gaulle’s Free French BCRA. André Schoegel and his wife had been among the network’s first recruits. Arrested by the Germans in 1942, Hentic had escaped to England and was subsequently tapped to direct the clandestine maritime and air operations that moved agents and equipment into and out of France. He had parachuted back into his native land in May 1943, and over the next five months organized several seaborne operations (for which he used the nom de guerre “Maho”), nearly a dozen landings by British special-missions aircraft, and a score of drops of both agents and supplies. Hentic not only had the authority to decide when and where incoming covert flights would land, he also determined which passengers would be aboard when the airplanes departed for England. When told by Turma-Vengeance of Joe Cornwall’s three aborted attempts to leave France, Hentic agreed to find a place for the American airman aboard an outgoing flight.

  The morning of October 16 was an understandably somber one in the Morins’ apartment. In the time that Joe had spent at Invalides he had come to see Georges and Denise as surrogate parents, wise and caring people with an inner strength that reminded him of his mother and grandmother. The elder Morins had sheltered him, fed him, and shared their lives with him, all at terrible risk. And, of course, it was through them that he’d found Yvette—a strong, capable, and intelligent woman in her own right. Despite the difference in their ages, languages, and cultures, the American aviator and the vibrant Parisienne had found genuine and fulfilling love in the most unexpected of places in the most dangerous of times.

  And though Joe and Yvette had said their goodbyes before, that did not make this parting any easier. They had promised to spend their lives together, but they were both realists who understood the war might well last for years, and that it was entirely possible one or both of them might not survive it. While they didn’t know Hentic or the details of Joe’s impending journey, both assumed it would be dangerous. Nor were the Morins safe—the Germans had stepped up their antiresistance activities in Paris, making several arrests in just the past few days.33 To help ease Yvette’s fears about his safety, Joe vowed that he would get a message to her once he was back in England. And she, in turn, promised that she would write to him, entrusting the letter to a departing evader or résistant.

  Finally, just after five thirty in the afternoon, the time came for Joe to leave Invalides for the last time. He, Yvette, Georges, Denise, and Germaine Mercier set off on foot for the Gare d’Austerlitz, some two and a half miles to the southeast. Joe and Yvette walked hand-in-hand, while Denise carried Joe’s dinner for the trip—a shoebox bearing some roasted rabbit wrapped in a cloth. At the station the group made contact with the woman who was to be Joe’s escort, and after she handed the airman his ticket they all walked toward the train’s departure platform. There were no troops or police at the head of the platform, just a conductor checking tickets and glancing at identity cards, and before Joe walked through he stopped to hug and kiss Georges, Denise, and Germaine. Then Joe and Yvette embraced for several moments, tears running down their cheeks as they whispered in each other’s ears. Reluctantly turning away, Joe followed his escort aboard their assigned car.

  Moments later, as the train began pulling away, Joe’s emotional state briefly overcame his common sense. Suddenly realizing that in the confusion of the farewells he’d forgotten the shoebox, he opened the window of the railway carriage and shouted in English, “Yvette, my rabbit!” His outburst could have had tragic consequences had it reached the ears of the German soldiers two platforms over, but as it was the din of arriving and departing trains ensured that Yvette and the others were the only ones to hear it. Though momentarily shocked, they burst out laughing in emotional release as they watched Joe’s waving form disappear into the distance.34

  THE FACT THAT JOE HAD NO SHOEBOX DINNER TURNED OUT NOT TO BE A problem, for his journey was far shorter than he had anticipated. Because neither he nor the Morins had been given any details of his journey, they had assumed that his route back to England would take him over the Pyrenees to Spain, and that he would travel by rail at least as far as Toulouse. Instead, Joe’s escort motioned him to follow her off the train at a small station between Toury and Artenay, barely fifty-five miles southwest of Paris. There the aviator was handed off to a male member of Pierre Hentic’s team, and the female escort returned to the capital.

  After leaving the station Joe and his new guide walked some seven miles to a small farmhouse, where they stayed until October 18. “Trellu” arrived late that night, accompanied by French Colonel L. Brosse, a former army officer who had become a senior member of Jade-Fitzroy, and a second man whom Cornwall later identified as a British SIS captain named Louis.35 The four men and three additional helpers climbed into the back of a small farm truck for a lights-out journey over several miles of back roads. The vehicle dropped them next to a vast open field nine miles northwest of Toury and less than a mile west of the village of Baudreville, and when the helpers began setting out small, unlit flashlights at intervals down the field Joe realized that he would not be hiking over the Pyrenees.

  Indeed, at that very moment the agent of Joe’s deliverance was just minutes away. Flying Officer James McAllister McBride of the No. 161 (Special Duties) Squadron was inbound in a single-engine Lysander IIIa, the slow yet sturdy aircraft of choice for covert landings in France. The twenty-five-year-old pilot had taken off from Tempsford three hours earlier on Operation Primrose, carrying a single Polish radio operator who was on his way to join an SOE team operating south of Chartres.36 McBride had encountered a bit of difficulty in finding the field, but by 12:58 A.M. he was overhead and Hentic
ordered his men to turn on the four flashlights that would mark the landing area. The Lysander touched down at exactly 1 A.M. on October 19, and the incoming radio operator and his equipment were quickly offloaded and Joe and his two fellow passengers taken aboard. This was not an easy process, for all three men had to clamber up a narrow metal ladder welded to the left side of the Lysander’s fuselage and cram themselves into a small rear cockpit originally intended for a single gunner. But the men managed it, and less than three minutes after landing McBride was lifting the aircraft back into the night sky and pointing its nose toward England.

  The flight gave Joe time to ponder the events of the previous three months, and the ways in which his time in France had changed him. He had taken off from Rougham a man convinced he had no future, living day to day in fear, his other emotions largely numbed by the death and destruction he’d witnessed on every combat mission. Yet he was now returning to England as a man in love, engaged to marry the woman with whom he planned to spend the rest of his life and happier than he had ever been. He knew that he and Yvette would likely be separated for some time, and accepted that fate might have some unpleasant surprises in store for them. What he didn’t expect was one startling and totally incomprehensible bit of news he received soon after McBride’s Lysander landed at Tempsford at 4:03 A.M. on October 19.37

  After untangling themselves from the cramped rear cockpit Joe and his two fellow passengers were led into the No. 161 Squadron operations building, where a USAAF lieutenant was waiting with an enlisted driver. The RAF had notified Eighth Air Force headquarters that Joe would be returning, the man said, and he and the driver were there to take Joe to London for the standard debriefing by MIS-X.38 As Joe settled into the staff car for the drive south, the officer turned to him and said, “Sergeant, you’ll be happy to know we’ve sent a telegram to your wife informing her of your safe return.”

  Stunned, Joe could only respond, “My what?”

  Chapter 7

  A HOMEWARD FLIGHT AND A TRAIN TO HELL

  JOE CORNWALL WAS A VERY TIRED AND EXTREMELY CONFUSED MAN during the hours-long ride from Tempsford airfield to London. Tired, because he had been awake for almost twenty-four hours, and confused—even dumbfounded—by the young officer’s statement that the USAAF had contacted someone it believed to be Joe’s wife. Though the lieutenant was apologetic when Joe explained that he wasn’t married, the man had no further details about the notification and explained that a solution to the mystery would have to wait until they got to London. He would call the 94th Group at Rougham, he said, while Joe started the debriefing process.

  Just before dawn the staff car pulled up in front of a narrow, multistory Georgian townhouse at 63 Brook Street, barely fifty feet from the famous Claridge’s Hotel in London’s tony Mayfair district.1 There was no signage to indicate the smaller building’s purpose, and heavy curtains blocked the view through the three-section bay window to one side of the front door. Upon walking into the marble-tiled foyer Joe and the lieutenant encountered a military police soldier sitting behind a standard U.S. Army–issue wooden desk, a stenciled sign on the wall behind him reading, “Welcome to the United States Special Reception Center.” Both men signed the security log, after which the young lieutenant told Joe he would call Rougham about the mistaken next-of-kin notification. He then hurried off, disappearing through one of several doors lining a short hallway stretching toward the rear of the building.

  Moments later another uniformed MP appeared and beckoned Joe to follow him up the ornate stairway just behind the desk in the foyer. They climbed several levels, ultimately reaching the landing of the top floor. The MP walked to the rear of the building and opened the door to a small bedroom, whose single dormer window looked out onto a tiny, enclosed yard. As Joe took in his new accommodations the soldier asked him his waist, jacket, hat, and shoe sizes, then returned minutes later with a complete and apparently brand-new olive-drab enlisted man’s dress uniform. The left shoulder of the jacket bore an Eighth Air Force patch and the lapels carried USAAF brass, but the sleeves were devoid of rank insignia. The MP said the debriefing process would not begin until the afternoon, and suggested that Joe get some sleep. Pointing to the towel, shaving razor, and bar of soap on the room’s small nightstand, the man also smilingly said that before meeting his interviewers Joe might want to avail himself of the shower room on the floor below.

  For several minutes after the MP’s departure Joe stood at the window, peering out at the leaden sky of a cold British morning. The journey from a deserted field in enemy-occupied France to this posh townhouse in the heart of London had been relatively abrupt, and he knew that he needed to put into some kind of order the images and sounds swirling in his head. He also needed to puzzle out why the USAAF thought he was married, and of course, he wanted the chance to savor the warmth and serenity that thinking of Yvette brought him. But all of that would have to wait, he admitted to himself, because right now, more than anything, he needed to sleep. He lay down on the narrow bed, still wearing the clothes he’d put on at Invalides four days earlier, and was instantly dead to the world.

  Awakened in midafternoon by a different MP, Joe shaved, showered, and put on the new uniform before going downstairs, where he found the young lieutenant waiting for him. The man had called Rougham, he said, and been told that news of Joe’s MIA status and his return to Allied control had been sent to a Clara B. Cornwall in Raceland, Louisiana. Joe was about to protest that he didn’t know anyone by that name, and that he had never listed a wife as his next of kin, when the lieutenant interrupted him to explain the apparent source of the confusion.

  When Salty’s Naturals was shot down, the officer said, the 94th Bomb Group’s administrative office had followed USAAF policy by generating a Missing Aircrew Report, or MACR, that listed all the men aboard the downed aircraft and their designated next of kin. The standard practice was to notify a missing man’s wife, if he had one, the assumption being that the spouse would then communicate the airman’s status to his other relatives. Though Joe had designated both of his divorced parents as his next of kin, a personnel clerk going through his file in Rougham had found the form he’d signed before leaving Colorado that authorized payment of a percentage of his GI life insurance to Clara Brawner Gypin. The clerk had assumed that Gypin was the woman’s maiden name, and had “corrected” it to Cornwall on the MACR.2

  Upon receiving notification of the loss of Salty’s Naturals the War Department’s adjutant general’s office in Washington, D.C., had sent the standard “We Regret to Inform You” telegram to the address Joe had listed on the beneficiary form—Clara’s mother’s home outside San Antonio. The mother had responded to the telegram by informing the War Department by mail that her daughter’s married name was Rebuck, not Cornwall, and that she was then living in Raceland.3 For reasons no one could fathom, the young lieutenant said, the adjutant general’s office had then sent the same telegram to the Louisiana address, again addressed to Clara B. Cornwall. Then, to make matters worse, on Monday, August 2, the War Department had listed the incorrect information on its weekly news release regarding service members killed, wounded, or missing in action. The following day at least two newspapers, one of them in Louisiana, reported Joe’s MIA status and that his wife Clara had been notified.4

  Joe had fond memories of his brief relationship with the woman he’d known as Clara Gypin, and he hoped that the erroneous next-of-kin notification had not caused her trouble with whomever she was actually married to. A more pressing concern, however, was the fact that the USAAF’s mistaken assumption about Joe’s marital status meant that his parents had never been informed that he’d been listed as missing in action, or that he had been safely returned to Allied control. That issue was being addressed, the lieutenant said, and within the next forty-eight hours Joe’s mother and father would each receive a telegram saying simply that he was well and back in England.

  The next-of-kin issues out of the way, Joe moved on to the next step in
his postevasion processing—a thorough medical exam in the Special Reception Center’s small clinic. Not surprisingly, he’d lost weight during his time in France, and he was found to need some minor dental work. On a more serious note, the physician determined that the lingering pain between Joe’s shoulders and the partial loss of sensation along both sides of his lumbar spine were the direct result of his bailout from Salty’s Naturals and subsequent hard landing in a French field.

  With the medical exam concluded, Joe’s hosts at 63 Brook Street were able to begin his formal debriefing. For several hours a day from the late afternoon of October 19 through midday on Friday the twenty-second, officers from both MIS-X and the Eighth Air Force intelligence section patiently questioned Joe about every aspect of the downing of Salty’s Naturals and the time he’d spent in France. The intelligence officers focused on operational issues, including the numbers and types of German aircraft that had attacked the 94th Bomb Group’s formation; any distinctive markings the enemy machines carried and the tactics employed against the bombers; the fate of Joe’s crewmates; and the location of any enemy bases, units, or vehicles Joe had noticed during his time on the ground. The MIS-X interviewers’ questions, on the other hand, covered two differing aspects of Joe’s evasion experience.5

  First, a three-person team of interviewers led by a Major Richard Nelson asked for all the details Joe could remember about his time on the ground. Where had he landed? How quickly had he gotten rid of his parachute and Mae West, and had he buried them or hidden them in some other way? How soon after landing had he encountered helpful civilians, and had they provided him with clothes and food? Did he know the real names and approximate ages of the people who’d helped him, and could he describe their appearance? Did any of the helpers speak English, and had any of them ever named the networks to which they belonged? Had he seen any indications of dissension within the groups that had aided him, and had anyone indicated any level of distrust in other members of their organization? Could he recall the street addresses of the places he’d stayed? Had he at any point been forced to interact with the Germans—at a random ID check at a train station, for example?