A young man meets his destiny.
BEFORE REACHING PARIS, I ESCAPED FROM ST-QUENTIN.
The town of St-Quentin, the capital of Picardie in northern France.
The year was 1940. The German army had invaded Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. The only remaining obstacle to Hitler’s total domination of Western Europe was Great Britain, a few tantalizing miles across the Channel. In the fall, the German High Command implemented the first phase of Operation Sea Lion: saturation bombing of the British seaports and the London Blitz. South of the Belgian border, north of Paris, the invasion force was readying an attack for the spring of 1941.
At the time, I was nineteen, an American student living with an uncle in Belgium. The German authorities in our small town had paid scant attention to me until September 10 when it was announced that President Roosevelt had transferred 50 American destroyers to the Royal Navy. The local commandant considered this an overt act of war for which he held me personally responsible. I was ordered to report to the Kreiskommandatur in Brussels to justify my status as a non-combatant neutral alien. There was a complication—I carried a valid American passport and was U.S. born, but the fact that both my mother and father had been born in France made me a French citizen according to French and German laws. My other problem was that I had failed to report for conscription in the French army when I reached eighteen; this made me a deserter as well. Rather than report to the Germans to face jail or deportation, I joined the Belgian Underground.
“H as the last word been spoken? Must hope die now? Is our defeat decisive? No,” the voice thundered, “nothing is lost for France!”
This was the “immortal message of June 18,” the radio appeal to Frenchmen to take heart, to resist the Germans, delivered by General Charles de Gaulle. It was the message that lived on in history in the oft-cited phrase, “France has lost a battle, not the war.”
De Gaulle never pronounced that phrase in exactly those words. What he said was, “This war has not ended with the battle of France. This war is a world war,” but the shorter, more dramatic version that lived on was close enough to what de Gaulle actually had said to be valid.
—David Schoenbrun, As France Goes
My best friend was the leader of a small group of resisters who helped escaped allied prisoners evade the Gestapo. He controlled black market and smuggling rings which he used to finance his clandestine operations. He signed me on as a courier. For a couple of months I lived in safe houses and smuggled uncut diamonds from Antwerp across the border into France; occasionally, I served as an English interpreter. That November, the Germans changed the currency laws for the occupied countries, and our group was able to steal one million newly printed Occupation Reichmarks. The money had to be spread around to our operatives in a way that it could not be traced. As my final job for the Underground, I was given the opportunity to earn my passage back to the U.S. by smuggling part of the loot to our safe house in Paris. Up to that time the border was fairly porous, our couriers carrying false papers moved people and money back and forth regularly. What we didn’t realize was that this red zone, as it came to be known, had been placed on high alert by the Germans to prevent spying on the troop movements. Special passes from the Kreiskommandatur in Brussels were required for civilian travel. All I had was my American passport. To hide my share of the swag, 150,000 Reichmarks, I divided the bills into two bundles which I wrapped in brown paper then baked in two large loaves of peasant bread. Bread was rationed and I would not attract attention by carrying some in my luggage. When I boarded the Brussels-Paris express, I carefully selected a seat in a second class compartment closest to an exit.
The train had been chugging along for some time through the wintry countryside when it slowed down and finally stopped. I stepped out of the compartment and saw two German military policemen wearing the insignia of the “Feldengendarmerie” enter at the opposite end of the carriage. As the train started slowly, I reached for the handle on the exit door, ready to jump, but there were sentries posted every few feet along the track. The door to the rest room was at my back, I opened it and locked myself in, trapped like an animal. In a cold sweat with my pulse racing, I prayed that the police would overlook my hiding place. Soon, I heard a rap on the door. I didn’t respond at first but when it persisted, louder and louder, I opened the door and two of the largest German soldiers that I had ever seen walked in; one stood in front and one in back of me.
“Papiers?”
I showed them my passport, they compared me to my photo then the largest one said, “Zu schen sein passierschein?”
“Nicht Verstehen,” I answered.
He smiled, “Mitkommen.”
They frisked me for weapons and took me back to my seat where one of them guarded me until we reached the next stop—St-Quentin. A six-man squad of soldiers waited on the platform. The policeman handed my passport to a corporal; three other prisoners joined us, then we were marched double file across the tracks, over a bridge, then right in the center of the street going uptown. Curious civilians stopped to stare at us, traffic went around us. Soon, we stopped at a building over which flew a huge swastika flag. The troopers herded us into a room filled with frightened men and women; some were crying. They didn’t make room for me so I sat on my fancy yellow leather suitcase. The corporal of the guard handed our papers to two Gestapo men who sat at the opposite end of the room. One of them came to me, motioned me off my suitcase and took it away. The smell of my terror was added to that of the other prisoners. A Gestapo seated at the table piled high with papers pointed and shouted questions at us in German. An interpreter translated his questions. I understood most of what the Gestapo was saying, but when my turn came, he pointed at me and shouted, “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
I looked blankly at him and kept silent.
The translator said, “Do you understand German?”
“Unfortunately, no. Only English and French.”
My answer sent the Gestapo into a rage, he got red in the face, started shouting louder and banging his fist on the table. He threw some papers in a folder but kept on raving and making menacing gestures.
The translator said, “He is turning you over to the judge for immediate sentencing. He says that you are a Frenchman with a fake American passport sent here to spy for the British. If it was up to him, he’d call out the firing squad and shoot you without a trial, this minute.”
The other prisoners moved away from me as if I were a leper. I began to perspire, my hands shook and my mouth and throat went dry. One of the Gestapo soldiers pushed me into the next room, past the raving maniac who was still screaming.
It served as a court room. On an elevated dais a small baldheaded, sour-faced man dressed in a black uniform sat at a large desk. He picked through my papers, looked at me with disgust and speaking in French said, “This court is tired of adjudicating cases that are not in our jurisdiction. You will be tried in a military court in Brussels. You are remanded back to Belgium.”
In German, he ordered the Gestapo to take me away and to ship me back on the next train.
I was taken to a small room where three French gendarmes sat at a small table playing cards. The guard propelled me towards them and in an accented French told them to push me across the red line as soon as possible. They interrupted their card game and looked at me with professional interest, trying to place me in some criminal category. What was this well-dressed young man up to?
One of them, not unkindly said, “Sit down and relax. It will take some time for the Germans to fill out all their forms. They love paper work. There isn’t a train north until tomorrow anyway. You will sleep in our jail tonight.”
Ever since my arrest I had lived in a state of disorganized terror as if I’d been thrown overboard in a vast ocean full of man-eaters. I was desperately paddling to stay afloat while dozens of other prisoners were clinging to the sides of a boat. They were torn away, one by one, by the attacking sharks. Sitting in the boat, which flew the swastika, drunken soldiers amused themselves, pushing men, women and children over the side. I was living a nightmare.
At dawn on July 16, 1942, police across Paris arrested more than 16,000 Jews and bused them to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, an indoor cycling stadium.
It was the first major roundup of Jews in Nazi-occupied France. The families were held inside without food or water for three days. Those who survived were transferred to concentration camps in France and, ultimately, to Auschwitz.
—George Rodrigue, “France Reopens its WWII Wounds,” The Dallas Morning News
The benign attitude of the French gendarmes reassured me. It changed my outlook from terror to simple fear. It is astonishing what a kind word can accomplish in a desperate situation. The gendarmes ignored me and returned to their noisy game. In about an hour, a German brought my suitcase and handed the policemen a manila envelope. I asked the sergeant if I could get some cigarettes out of my bag. He nodded yes. I opened it. I could tell that it had been searched, but both loaves of bread appeared intact. My spirits soared from despair to hope. Everything was not lost. My luck was changing; with courage, imagination, and determination, I might escape the sharks. When the card game ended, the gendarmes added their score, exchanged money and then turned towards me. I offered them cigarettes and asked them if it was possible for us to stop and buy some food on our way to the jail.
“If you have money to pay for it, we’ll gladly take you to a restaurant.”
“If it’s OK, I would gladly buy drinks and dinner all around.”
They looked at each other, but they didn’t answer. One of them escorted me out, through a back door, down an alley to a closed restaurant. We entered through the kitchen. It was empty except for the owners. We were finishing our first drink when the other two gendarmes showed up. I called for more drinks. We enjoyed a five course dinner with bottles of expensive wine with each course; then cognac and more wine. I told them that I was an American student trying to reach Paris prior to returning home. My arrest was a total mistake. I am sure that they didn’t believe me. We played cards and drank until midnight. Naturally, I lost heavily. Since it was past curfew, the jail was closed and I was such a grand fellow and model prisoner, they decided that I should take a room upstairs; drunk as I was they said that they were certain that I wouldn’t try to escape. Afterwards, hugged by the comfort and warmth of a feather bed, I decided that the odds were so poor that I could run away in the middle of the night, without papers, in a strange town crawling with Germans, that I planned to wait until daybreak before making my move. I fell asleep and dreamt of Paris.
Next morning, shaved and dressed in my tweeds, I was ready to step out onto the wet pavement when one of the gendarmes showed up. He seemed surprised that I was still around. They must have really thought that I was a spy. Mustering all my courage, I asked him if he carried a gun. No, the Germans didn’t trust him, he was armed with a night stick and a whistle. If a prisoner tried to run away, his orders were to try to restrain him and to blow his whistle to alert the German and French police to come to his aid. Outside, the rain had stopped but had been replaced by a cold gray fog, the kind that chills you right through to the bone marrow. I took an envelope filled with currency and put it in his hand.
“I’d appreciate it if you could give me my passport and wait a couple of hours before blowing your whistle.”
He put the envelope in his tunic pocket, handed me my passport out of the manila folder, opened the door, pointed down the hill towards the railroad station.
“That is the way south. Keep off the paved roads, try the fields. If you get caught tell them that you knocked me down and overpowered me. Good luck.”
The streets were deserted, I walked across the Marne canal without seeing anyone. When I reached the railroad tracks, I entered the plowed fields slippery with brown clay. The fog was thicker around the waterways and the going so tough that I doubted that any patrols would venture into the countryside that morning. I stumbled along keeping the barely visible railroad lines to my right. From time to time, I stopped to rest and to listen to the sounds around me. I heard voices, dog barks, train, car and wagon noises. I was floating in a sea of fog with everything near but out of sight. Once, I was stopped by a canal. I didn’t panic, I backtracked alongside it and crossed the water at a railroad bridge which was left unguarded. Around noon, the fog eased a little. I had reached the outskirts of a small city. It was the town of Tergniers, a rail center with squat houses huddled around the station. Since leaving St-Quentin I hadn’t been challenged by anyone, my luck was holding. Before entering the town, I sat down and changed to a clean pair of shoes from my suitcase. I left my muddy ones in a culvert and, nonchalantly carrying my suitcase, I walked into the station. The platform was full of German soldiers. When a train with a Paris destination ground to a noisy stop, everyone including me jumped on board.
Struggling with my suitcase, I walked through the first class section until I located a compartment with an empty seat. All other seats were occupied by young officers. They helped me heave my coat and my bag onto the rack. They spoke to me, I answered “Guten tag. Jawohl....” and smiled a lot. I intimated that I was Flemish, “Flemmisch Sprechen. Deutsch Verstehen.”
In a sense, the wartime French government—headquartered in the resort town of Vichy and led by Marshal Philippe Petain—began to be rehabilitated under postwar President Charles de Gaulle. A vengeful bloodletting had followed the war, with perhaps 10,000 suspected collaborationists executed without trial. But then, for the sake of French pride and unity, the leader of the Free French helped build the myth of French resistance. Since then, French and foreign researchers have been systematically unraveling that tale, often against the wishes of the French government.
The groundbreaking research into Vichy was performed by an American historian, Robert Paxton. His 1973 book, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–44, drew upon German records to prove that Marshal Petain’s government not only collaborated voluntarily, but in some cases went beyond German demands.
—George Rodrigue, “France Reopens its WWII Wounds,” The Dallas Morning News
Looking around, I noticed that all the signs in the car were in German. God. In my haste, I had jumped on a troop train which had originated in the Fatherland. My traveling companions mistook me for one of their civilian surrogates—a collaborator. They couldn’t have treated me nicer; having exhausted most of my vocabulary and before I could arouse any suspicion, I had to find a way out—not the toilet this time. A steward playing a glockenspiel stuck his head in the compartment and announced the second seating for lunch. I followed him to an ornate dining car. He thrust a reservation book at me to sign in. I wrote something illegible followed by the street address of a hotel in Antwerp. He waved me to a small table for two; except for some ladies, I noticed that I was the only civilian there. I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible by looking out the window. The sun had finally broken through the mist. At a large table opposite mine, four German officers in full dress, their tunics covered with iron crosses, ribbons and medals were lingering over their desserts and plotting the train’s itinerary on a map. They observed the countryside with binoculars and talked about having traveled through there before. I overheard them say respectfully “General.” When the train reached Compiègne, the place where the armistices in 1918 and 1940 had been signed, they laughed and called for champagne. The General stood and proposed a toast. Everyone in the dining salon stood, including me. He noticed that I was raising my water glass so he directed the steward to bring me some champagne. On command, we toasted Germany’s victorious armies. As the only person not in uniform, I realized that I stood out like a sore thumb and expected the worst. Should the General try to talk to me, I was finished. When he stood up to leave, he directed the waiter to bring me two half-filled bottles of white wine and some cake from his table. I stood up, bowed and said, “Danke Schön, Herr General.”
He gave me the Nazi salute, “Heil Hitler.”
I responded in kind. When I sat down, I was pleased with my performance. My Heil Hitler to the General certainly impressed the rest of the diners who cast furtive glances in my direction. I really must be important for the General to take notice of me. The waiter brought the menu and I ordered sausage and red cabbage in my most guttural Flemish. The dining room was full and there were some officers waiting to be seated but because of my short acquaintance with my host I was allowed to savor their best Rhine wines and eat their gourmet food at my leisure like a privileged member of the Master Race. Had I been dressed in shabby clothes, worn muddy shoes and sporting a two day’s growth of beard, I would be traveling on a train going in the opposite direction to a certain death. Clothes make the man; this morning I was haggling with a French policeman for my freedom and now I was dining in the German senior officers’ salon. My long walk and the dangers I had faced sharpened my appetite; I did justice to the meal and the chocolate cake, the first chocolate that I had tasted in months. The waiter brought a box of cigars and a brandy snifter. He opened the box and I selected one as he poured me a half glass of Courvoisier from the General’s bottle. When I reached for a lighter, he gave me a light and I lit the cigar like an expert. I gave him a couple of hundred francs for his trouble. For my taste I find Courvoisier a little sweet—not enough oak. I prefer a more robust Cognac, but this being wartime and given the circumstances I must learn to make do.... The cigar was Dutch Sumatra perfect, it built a wonderful cone of ashes. The train rattled through the last miles of our journey. I smiled with contentment and a young lady two tables away smiled back. I hadn’t meant to smile at her, it was a reaction to my change of fortune; happiness like misery is easily transmitted. I was jettisoning my anguish every mile that I traveled away from St-Quentin and towards Paris. Here I was in the midst of my enemies, enjoying their hospitality while in my bag I carried 150,000 stolen marks. I went from the depth of despair to the heights of elation. Paris was not only my destination, it was my destiny. When we reached the drab industrial approaches to the city, the train slowed and I decided that it was safe for me to return to my seat. The rail lines around the Gare du Nord were guarded by anti-aircraft batteries. When the train stopped, all the military personnel were allowed on the platform. When I tried to exit, my passage was blocked by military policemen. I looked out the window and saw the reason why. The huge glass and steel building was festooned with swastikas. An honor guard stood at attention facing the train. A band played “Deutschland Über Alles.” The General and his staff reviewed the troops, saluted them, then the honor guard changed formation, and the band attacked a lively march tune as they goose-stepped out of the station. The General and all the troops followed, then me, whistling and marching in step, carrying my precious yellow leather suitcase towards freedom and the Paris boulevards.
I soon learned that the General who unwittingly helped me achieve the first stage of my escape was the new military governor of Paris.
Marcel Laventurier was born in the United States but spent his youth in Belgium and France. After escaping from the Nazis he served in the US Navy throughout World War II, married in 1945, and became a pharmacist in California. This story is one of a series that he has written about his war-time experiences.
During the long war years, when I was living far from Paris, I often used to wonder how so large a city found room inside a tiny compartment of the human brain. Paris, for me, had become a kind of inner world through which I roamed on those difficult dawn hours when despair lies in wait for the waking sleeper. I needed time, though, to take a conscious step over the threshold of this secret city that I was carrying around inside me; first there were the black weeks during which the mere mention of the name Paris broke the hearts of all who heard it. So I barred the gates of my city against myself; I banished its avenues as far away as possible. At night, however, flouting my own orders, I would slink along its streets like a spy or a thief, restlessly going from house to house. Suddenly I would appear in a room where friends were hiding. “What—you here? It is you!” And one of those interminable conversations would start up and not stop until daybreak. Things we could not tell one another with the width of the Atlantic between us we communicated from heart to heart in those imaginary conversations. Gone was all the water that separated us; I had abolished space; I was there. I wanted to know everything. As I left I used to touch the stones of the houses and the trunks of the trees with my hands, and I would wake with a curious feeling of having been both fulfilled and frustrated.
Thinking about the capital all the time, I rebuilt it inside myself. I replaced its physical presence with something else, something almost supernatural; I don’t know what to call it. A map of Paris pinned to the wall would hold my gaze for long periods, teaching me things almost subliminally. I made the discovery that Paris was shaped like a human brain.
—Julian Green, Paris, translated by J. A. Underwood