Nell was reading a letter from Tom that had just arrived.
‘My goodness!’ she exclaimed. ‘It looks as though the camp’s on the move . . . they’re being moved back to France.’ She looked up. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Daddy was back in France? He seems so far away – all that way on the other side of Germany . . . He also says – and this is the really wonderful news – that wives may be allowed to visit.’
Jeanne stood up and shouted out excitedly, ‘Me too . . . me too . . . can I go? Please Mum, can I go? I want to see Daddy.’
Nell sighed. ‘Come on, Jeannot, be sensible . . . it’ll be enough of a wonder if I’m allowed to go.’ Trying to placate her, she added, ‘I think it’s very unlikely that it’ll ever happen, anyway.’
In the winter of 1943, following many international negotiations, the internment camp was moved back to France lock, stock and barrel. According to the Geneva Convention, after a certain length of time civilian internees had to return to the country from which they were captured.
They travelled by train to the Vosges Mountains of eastern France, not far from the Swiss border, and a derelict French army barracks was opened up at Giromagny, a village near Belfort. As soon as they arrived, the internees had to clean out the barracks and make them fit to live in. It was freezing cold and their most urgent requirement was to keep warm. Anything, absolutely anything at all, that was not wanted was burned on the stoves in the middle of the huts – doors, chairs, wood lying around outside the huts.
So the men settled in and waited for spring.
The other most urgent job was to see to the camp’s defunct electricity generator, and this is where Tom’s skills were called upon. As he was an electrical engineer, he was made a ‘trustee’ and allowed, under armed guard, to go into the village to order his electrical equipment and all other requirements whenever he wanted. He was also put in charge of supervising volunteer electricians, and soon had the camp power running to his satisfaction.
Now that he was back on his own patch, speaking his own language, Tom-the-fixer became well known in the village. He even made friends with the local Resistance, some of whom were caught and shot during his stay there. Nell and the girls were mystified when they started receiving letters addressed to ‘Mademoiselle Beatrice Marie’, postmarked ‘Giromagny’. These were letters from Tom, smuggled out of the camp and given to French friends to post for him. This was the first opportunity they had had to receive uncensored letters from him, and they could now learn how things really were in the camp, how he felt and his innermost thoughts. These letters were a joy to read. The censored letters had always been so guarded, full of veiled references and personal codes.
Yes, Nell thought, things are really going to be different now he’s back in France.
The adjutant looked up irritably. ‘Yes?’ he said. A woman and child stood before him. Another annoying woman wanting something or other, no doubt. Didn’t these people ever learn?
Nell swallowed hard. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy but she wasn’t going to be put off by officialdom. She wanted her travel pass and she was determined to get it, either today, or soon, but ‘by jove’, she was going to get it.
‘Well, what do you want?’ The adjutant said abruptly.
She explained. She required a travel pass to go and see her internee husband in eastern France.
The adjutant was exasperated: an English woman, asking for a favour from him? Really, what a nerve! ‘Papers!’ he snapped. When one couldn’t think of anything to say, one asked for the person’s papers. It was one of the first regulations in the ‘How to be a petty official in an occupied country’ rule book.
Nell handed him her British passport. He scrutinised it minutely, turning the pages slowly, looked up at her, then down at the photo, then back to her. Suddenly, something was wrong. He stiffened and took a deep breath.
He looked up at Nell, with her fresh English-rose complexion and button-nose.
‘What’s this? Lewis? Lewis? Levi? . . . Jew?’
‘No.’ said Nell wearily. ‘Not Jew . . . Welsh. It’s my maiden name, Lewis. It’s a good old Welsh name.’ She would have laughed if she hadn’t been so scared. She didn’t want to land up in one of those concentration camps she’d heard nasty rumours about.
He looked at the blonde, Aryan-looking child whose hand the woman was holding. He could think of nothing else to say. He sighed. ‘Oh, very well then, I’ll see if the Commandant will see you.’
The Commandant was pacing up and down anxiously, unaware of his luxurious surroundings. The news from home was bad, very bad. A telephone call that morning had informed him that Cologne, his home town, had been bombed – no, not bombed, plastered by the Allied bombers during the night. He was desperately worried, hoping his wife and children were safe. Was the war beginning to take a turn for the worse? His thoughts were black and troubled as he paced up and down, up and down.
Schmidt, his adjutant, showed in a woman and child.
‘Yes . . .?’ He looked up impatiently. ‘Well, what is it, Schmidt?’
Schmidt hesitated. ‘Excuse me, Commandant, Mrs Sarginson requests—’
‘Mrs . . . Mrs?’ He turned and faced Nell. ‘How dare you?
How dare you!’ He was about to explode. ‘Your English planes bombed Cologne last night . . . My wife and family . . . How dare you request anything! Get out! Get out of my sight!’
Back outside, walking along the broad avenue, Nell tucked Jeanne’s arm into hers. Oh well, never mind. We’ll try another day,’ she said matter-of-factly. Then she added, as she had done many times, ‘At least we’re not under the Japs, that’s what I say!’
Nell was packing, getting ready for the hazardous journey. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy but she could never have dreamed how difficult it turned out to be. She had persisted with her applications for a travel permit and, in the end, the Commandant had given in. He was probably glad to be rid of her.
It took Nell three days to travel to eastern France. This was in the months just prior to the D-day landings and the Allies were constantly bombing the railways, harassing the German troops and trying to hinder their movements at every turn. Every few miles the train stopped due to an air raid further up the line. The passengers were made to get off the train and wait in freezing-cold station waiting rooms.
Nell saw huge locomotives lying on their sides in fields on the edge of the tracks, like discarded toys, rails curled up heavenwards. They would pass non-existent railway stations, the name of the town scrawled in chalk on the side of a damaged wagon.
She slept in waiting rooms and saw Russian slave-labourers who were forced to work on the railway lines during the air raids and Indo-Chinese prisoners kicked awake by German guards. They were captives in someone else’s war and far away from home. Nell smiled at them, and they smiled back, pleased to see a friendly face.
She finally arrived in Giromagny, a pretty village at the foot of the mountains. She checked into the hotel where she was expected. This was the hotel used by the visiting wives and she was able to learn the ropes from them. She found out that she would be allowed two visits, each two hours long, and that the guards weren’t too obtrusive. What Nell needed most now was a long rest, a good meal, a hot bath, and she would be fit for anything.
She arrived at the prison camp gates the following morning with the other wives, full of trepidation. How would it be after three long years? Would Tom have changed much? Would he think she had changed?
Tom wrote the following to Gramp and Auntie Rikkie after Nell’s visits:
The women were shown into the visiting room. In one of his uncensored letters, Tom had told Nell to bring two large shopping bags. For the life of her, she couldn’t think why.
The men were let into the room, and at last she saw Tom. He looks huge, she thought. He hasn’t told me he’s put on so much weight. Her first reaction was one of disappointment. He was wearing his large Polish cavalry officer’s coat, veteran of two harsh German winters. He appeared to have a tiny head and the coat stuck out, forming a triangle, right down to the ground. When he hugged and kissed her, he was uncomfortable and lumpy all over. Nell was baffled, but she soon found out what he’d been up to.
After one of the guards had passed by and had his back to them, Tom whispered, ‘Put your shopping bag between us on the ground . . . there . . . that’s right.’ Out of the depths of his huge coat came an assortment of tins, cigarettes, cocoa, jam, Spam, dried milk, dried eggs. It was the most amazing treasure trove. He was like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat and Nell’s eyes were popping out. She hadn’t seen such luxuries in years.
Tom-the-fixer had been at work again. When he’d realised the likelihood of Nell’s visit, he had bartered, borrowed, cadged, pawned, hocked, and generally made a nuisance of himself so that Nell would return to their girls fully laden.
During the visits, Sandy Youll, their neighbour from Calais, brought a tray of tea in, and Nell was delighted to have a chat with him.
As she left at the end of the first visit, swaying slightly from the weight of her two laden shopping bags, Tom whispered, ‘Bring the bags tomorrow.’ He hugged and kissed her goodbye, feeling more like the old Tom, not lumpy anymore!
When Nell returned to her hotel room, she packed the tins away in her cases. But now she had a dilemma. If there were going to be more tins tomorrow, how on earth was she going to get them home? They weighed a ton already. Then she smiled, thinking of her homecoming and the girls’ astonishment when she showed them what she had brought back for them.
Just as Tom had predicted, the pantomime was repeated the next day. He entered the room, coat buttoned up to the neck and, once he sat down, tins appeared, just like so many conjuring tricks, and disappeared into Nell’s bags. It was quite amazing. When they hugged and kissed for the last time and said goodbye, Nell thought she detected a twinkle in Tom’s eye. There was something left unsaid, unresolved, and she left puzzled. What was he up to this time?
Tom was about to become a champion fixer!
The next morning at the hotel, a note was handed to Nell. It was from Tom.
It read: Go up the road behind the church, keep going till you leave the village, go up the hill and wait by the sub-station at the top. Come alone.
How mysterious, thought Nell. It just sounds like the script for a bad B movie.
She put her hat and coat on, picked up her handbag and walking past the church, followed the instructions. She left the village, went up the hill and there at the top stood Tom with a German guard, gun slung nonchalantly over his shoulder.
Tom unlocked the sub-station door and let Nell in. The German, smoking an English cigarette, stood guard outside while Tom and Nell, amidst the coils of wire and electrical paraphernalia, made love for the first time in three years.
The morning of Nell’s departure, the hotel was buzzing. There was a rumour that one of the internees had somehow managed to leave the camp and had made love to his wife! As she said her goodbyes, Nell smiled sweetly. ‘Oh, I wish it had been me!’
She left with two other women for the station. Their heavy suitcases were wheeled in a handcart by a porter. Nell realised she had a real problem: she could not lift the cases; they were far too heavy. The lad from the hotel had put them on the train for her, but how on earth was she going to cope when she had to change trains?
She found a simple solution to her dilemma. The first time this happened, she found a porter and offered him two English cigarettes as a tip. English cigarettes in occupied France were more precious than gold, a half-forgotten luxury. The look of astonishment on the man’s face was a picture. He touched his forelock and said in an awed whisper, ‘Yes Madame, right away, Madame.’ He picked the two suitcases up as though they were full of feathers and swung them onto the train, making sure that Nell followed him, and found her a comfortable seat. She had a good supply of English cigarettes and had no trouble in getting home despite the whole dangerous, miserable journey to be made in reverse. Stopping and starting, sleeping in freezing station waiting rooms, waiting for the railway lines to be cleared; when the taxi pulled up outside the house in Cambrai, she was exhausted, but she had to see the girls’ reaction to the goodies she had brought home. ‘Wait till you see what I’ve got to show you!’
‘What? What?’ They danced up and down, pleased to see their mother, and were bursting with curiosity. ‘What is it, Mum? Let’s see, let’s see!’ They crowded round Nell as she opened the first case. There were three simultaneous intakes of breath.
‘Oh, my goodness . . . What are they . . .? Let’s have a look . . .’ They reverently picked up the tins one by one, reading the foreign-looking labels and exclaiming with excitement. There were things there they hadn’t seen for years, and others they had never seen at all.
‘But how did you get them? Where are they from?’ They all spoke together, one question coming on top of another.
‘It’s your father. I’ve always told you he’s a bit of a fixer.’
Nell then told them the whole story of her visits to the camp, how Tom had saved as much food as he could for them and of her difficulty in getting home. She told them about the porter and how she found that English cigarettes had made the best tips. She added, ‘I think he thought I was a spy, or at least a Resistance worker carrying heavy transmitting equipment!’ It amused them to think of their mother as a spy, or worse.
They went back to examining the tins, reading the labels out loud and translating for Jeanne.
‘What’s this?’ Jeanne held up a large round tin. ‘K.L.I.M.’
‘Klim,’ said Nell. ‘It’s American, dried milk.’
‘Dried milk? Whatever next? I didn’t know there was such a thing as dried milk. And this, what is it?’ Jeanne held up a squarish, brown waxed box.
‘Oh, that’s dried egg.’
The girls examined the box in turn, turning it over and reading the cooking instructions on the side. ‘Fancy! Dried egg! Who’d have ever thought it?’
Nell was well-off at last. She now had goods she could barter for whatever was most urgently needed, be it food or clothes.
Before stowing the cases under the bed, Nell poured the girls a cup of real English tea, with a little of Jeanne’s milk ration added. Then she sat down, put her feet up, closed her eyes and took a long, slow drag from one of the cigarettes. She had earned a good rest.
Jeanne jumped around the room, sniffing the air. ‘It smells different, it smells . . . it smells . . . She sought the right word. ‘It smells English!’ she said triumphantly.
Nell was to visit Tom again, in March, and this time she took Marie with her. The journey was just as bad as before, but didn’t seem so, as she now had someone to share it with.
Marie, as usual, charmed everyone, everywhere she went. As well as her beauty, there was an openness, a frankness about her in those days that made everyone who came into contact with her warm to her. There was also her prodigious sense of humour. No matter how hard, how difficult the situation, she always managed to turn it into a joke.
When she arrived at the internment camp wearing a fashionable bright-red schoolgirl hat, she caused a sensation. Tom was bursting with pride as he showed off his lovely daughter to his fellow prisoners and all the men wanted to be introduced to her. His friends said she just looked like Princess Elizabeth.
Back in Cambrai, Nell had left Irene and Jeanne with Protestant friends from the church, the Pochet family.
Monsieur Pochet had an electrical goods shop down the high street. He and his wife were from Alsace-Lorraine, a part of France bordering on Germany. They and their five children, four boys and a girl, blond and blue-eyed, could have been mistaken for Germans, especially Madame, who wore her long, fair hair plaited and wound around her head like a German hausfrau. They bore a great hatred of the Germans, as Alsace-Lorraine has a long history of being overrun by Germany and then retaken by France, time and time again.
When Nell approached Monsieur and Madame requesting that they look after Irene and Jeanne during her absence, they didn’t hesitate for a second. They argued that, since they already had five children to feed, two more would make little difference.
Irene and Jeanne paired off with the Pochet children closest to their own age: Irene with fifteen-year-old Jean and Jeanne with the younger ones, Yves, a little older, and Claude, a little younger than herself. They could well have come from the same family, their fair heads bending down over their homework around the big kitchen table.
Jeanne enjoyed her stay there. In the large, rambling flat above the shop, there was room to run or play hide-and-seek in the old cupboards and wardrobes and, what’s more, she always had someone to play with. Irene was quite boring these days; her nose was always in a book. She didn’t want to play any more and was becoming, as they say in France, Une jeune fille serieuse.
Jeanne always looked forward to mealtimes. Madame was an excellent cook and there was plenty of good food. Jeanne would have been quite happy if they had stayed at the Pochet’s forever.