TWENTY-FOUR hours after I arrived in Paris I ran into Fruity Metcalfe, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Windsor.

“They’ve done it!” he said.

“Who’s done what?”

“The Huns have crossed the Meuse in three places and broken into France at Sedan.”

“What does that mean?”

“Good God, anything! It can mean they’ll be in Paris in a fortnight. Or even sooner.”

I stared at Fruity disbelievingly. For nine months England and France had prepared for this attack; for nine months they had blockaded Germany with the purpose of forcing her to destroy herself against the invincible steel and concrete of the Maginot Line. They had even extended a formal invitation to her: “Come on, Hitler,” said General Ironside, Commander-in-Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, “we’re ready for you.” Indeed the invulnerability of the Belgian and French fortifications was so unquestioned you began to hear the fear expressed that Germany might not attack and that the ‘bore’ war would stretch on for years. When the onslaught finally came, brutal and savage as it was, people said with relief: “At last the end of the war is in sight.”

“God knows the Meuse looked formidable enough,” Fruity continued. “A great, broad, swirling river. Only a week ago I stood on the bank near Mézières and a French officer said: ‘This is an obstacle they won’t ignore.’ And what happened? They just marched up to it, flung pontoons down, and went romping across as though it were a duck puddle. This isn’t a war, it’s a race. Blitz is too conservative a word. Why, you can’t even tack a map up on the wall, much less put the pins in, before it’s all over. Only four days ago the Duke spent two hours searching the shops for a map of Holland. When he pulled it down this morning, he said: ‘What country are we on now, Fruity?’ I suppose to-night we’ll take down Belgium and put up France.”

I thought Fruity was over-alarming and regarded his conversation sceptically; nevertheless, Sedan struck an ominous note. The last time the Germans had broken through at Sedan was in 1870—the time they’d got to Paris. I thought of Chesterton’s poem in which the old woman of Flanders says:

The death door. They had found it again. Did it still lead to Paris? On this wonderful spring day, it was impossible even to contemplate. Perhaps it was the unusual quiet, but Paris seemed so magnificently aloof, you couldn’t imagine it being despoiled. Many people, afraid of air attacks, had already left and there was only a thin stream of traffic on the boulevards; shops and restaurants were half empty and even the Ritz had lost its diehard patronage of women in wild hats. In my hotel off the Place Vendôme, there was no one except the concierge, the cat and myself.

Somehow the deserted, early-on-Sunday-morning look gave the capital a fresh beauty; there was a new softness in the wind blowing through the trees, the graceful sweep of the long avenues, and the wonderful blue-grey of the houses along the Seine. Every now and then the sirens broke the quiet, but there were never any planes and no one bothered to take shelter; everyone did exactly what they were told not to do, poking their heads out of the windows and looking up at the sky.

But in spite of the tranquillity, underneath there was a current of apprehension. People seemed only too willing to believe tales of German invincibility. When the concierge brought me the morning paper, he added bits of information of his own: that the Germans were taking no prisoners, but shooting everyone indiscriminately, and that the whole of Holland was in ashes. He had wild stories about parachutists; how the skies were black with them, and how they came down machine-gunning and dropping bombs from the air.

He was not the only one. Parachute stories seemed to be on everybody’s lips. You not only heard that nuns and priests were dropping from the heavens, but that whole choruses of ballet dancers were descending. When I went to see the Baroness on Tuesday afternoon, a friend came bursting into the flat with the news that one of them (I don’t know which brand) had just landed on the Champs-Élysées. We hurried out on the balcony: all along the avenue groups of people were staring up at the sky. I never discovered the truth of the report, but Alexander Werth in The Last Days of Paris claims it was only a sausage balloon that settled in the Place de la Madeleine. The Baroness was most indignant. “It is bad enough,” she said, “having the Boches invade your country by land, but when they come floating down from the skies as sisters of mercy—of mercy—it is disgusting, the filthy pigs!”

After I left the Baroness, I walked down the Champs-Élysées, cut through the Faubourg St. Honoré, and stopped at the British Embassy to see Sir Charles Mendl. The B.E.F. had a rule barring women correspondents from the front, and I asked Charles if he thought there was any possibility of getting round it. He seemed to think it would be difficult to manage in Paris and advised me to go to London and try and arrange it there.

Charles was none too happy about the situation. “The German planes and guns are formidable enough,” he said. “But even so, I don’t think they’re as dangerous as French morale. If that holds up, I’m confident everything will be all right, but if it doesn’t …”

Now I’d known Charles Mendl for over four years. He was one of my first friends in Europe and I never went through Paris without going to see him. He was one of the wisest people I knew and his twenty-five years in France had given him a deep understanding of the people; on many occasions he had made predictions contrary to the strong beliefs of the moment which invariably had been borne out. I had doubted his judgment about France at the time of Munich and he had been right: but I hadn’t learned my lesson and now I doubted him again. The French politicians might be defeatists, but surely not the French Army: everyone knew that Frenchmen fought like tigers on their own soil. It was one of the things you were taught as a child. I told him I thought his fears would be unconfirmed and he said: “I hope so, but I don’t think these are the same people that they were twenty years ago.”

I took Charles’s advice and planned to leave for London the following day. On the way back to the hotel I ran into Euan Butler. I hadn’t seen him since the night Robert and Lucy had ridden the horses in the Golden Horseshoe night-club in Berlin. At the outbreak of war he had given up his job as Times correspondent and joined the Army. Now he was attached to G.H.Q. and had come up to Paris for a few hours on official business. He was returning to the front in the morning, so we decided to celebrate, and went to dinner at Le Bœuf Sur Le Toit. There were only a few people in the restaurant, all of whom stared curiously at Euan’s Scottish plaid trousers (he was with the Cameronians), some of them smiling a little. Although the atmosphere was rather gloomy we had a good dinner and Euan was in high spirits—the only really optimistic person I saw during my forty-eight hours’ stay. When I asked him if the parachute stories were true, he said he believed a number of men had been dropped behind the French lines but certainly not dressed as nuns and bishops. He added someone had remarked facetiously that the French should advise the Germans that if they came down disguised as ballet dancers they must expect to be ravished by the troops. He said the morale was excellent at the French War Office and no one was in the least disturbed by the latest reports. The more the Germans extended themselves the more likely they were to be cut off when the counter-attack came.

Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that myself? I went to bed immensely reassured and the next day left for London, my optimism fully restored. Even the French communiqué, which confirmed Fruity’s report, laconically admitting that “between Namur and Mézières German troops crossed the river at three points”, didn’t alarm me. As the bus rattled through the streets of Paris on its way to Le Bourget, I didn’t imagine the next time I saw the capital would be four weeks later—exactly twenty-four hours before the German Army roared up the Champs-Élysées.

In London, everyone pinned their faith on the French counter-attack which never came. The French, people said, were wonderful improvisers. Although they had been surprised by the factors of the new mobile warfare, they were bound to rally, and when they struck it would be with terrible force. Day after day people picked up their morning papers expecting to read that the great offensive had begun; but the communiqué reported only fresh German advances. Then on May 28th King Leopold of the Belgians suddenly surrendered.

That same night I dined with a British staff officer who had just returned from the front. When I told him I was trying to get to France, he said: “Find out why the French won’t fight. Find out why they won’t stick to their posts; why they won’t engage the enemy; why they won’t even counter-attack.”

When I asked him if the answer didn’t lie in Germany’s crushing superiority, he shook his head. In the last war, he said, the British and French Armies faced far more deadly fire than had been seen in this one. The tonnage of explosives from an artillery barrage was infinitely greater than that which the Germans could deliver by air. He also refuted the stories that the French anti-tank guns were too light to penetrate the heavy German tanks. (Experts claimed that the ordinary two-pound anti-tank gun, with which the French were well equipped, was powerful enough to disable tanks of the heaviest category.)

I asked him what he thought the chances of the B.E.F. were, now that King Leopold had surrendered, and he replied bluntly: “Absolutely nil. They haven’t got a chance. The whole lot’s gone. If we get ten thousand back, we’re lucky.”

A few hours before, in the House of Commons, Mr. Churchill had hinted at the same disaster. He had said:

In spite of this warning the general public seemed unaware of the gravity of the situation. Anne O’Neill’s housekeeper, Mrs. Kinch, had two nephews with the B.E.F., but her only comment was: “Things looked just as bad in the last war. In the end it will be all right.”

For the people who knew, however, the following week was a grim one. On Thursday, May 30th, the attempt at evacuation began. Two days later I went down to Mereworth with Anne to spend the week-end with Esmond Harmsworth. The Germans had reached the Channel ports and although the house was forty miles from the coast, the ground reverberated every now and then with the distant explosion of bombs. Loelia Westminster was there, quiet and depressed; it wasn’t until the week-end was nearly over that she told us her brother was with the B.E.F. It must have been an unpleasant experience for her, for all day long fighters and bombers went over the house on their way to the battle. We sat out on the terrace and watched them pass, their silver wings almost indistinguishable against the sky. There always seemed to be more going out than coming back and we began morbidly to count the numbers.

Now the miracle of the evacuation has passed into history. Everyone knows how hundreds of small sailing vessels, trawlers, mine-sweepers, and fishing smacks, crossed the Channel and brought back over two hundred and seventy thousand men from the shores of Dunkirk. Anne and I drove down to Dover and saw some of the troops landing. Hundreds of them filed through the docks, dirty and tired. Some had equipment, some had none; some were in uniform and some in an odd assortment of sweaters and slacks. Most of them seemed in high spirits and waved at the crowd clustered against the railings to cheer them. The English soldiers grinned self-consciously and made jokes to each other; the French soldiers blew kisses to the girls. I went back to London by train and all along the way Union Jacks were flying.

Loelia Westminster’s brother, Lord Sysonby, was among the last to return. A few days later I lunched at Loelia’s and found him there. I was longing to get an account of the battle, but like most Englishmen, he revelled in understatement and it was difficult to fit the slender pieces into a composite picture. He said his regiment was fighting alongside a Belgian unit. When they heard the news of King Leopold’s surrender, things became extremely awkward. They felt it would be in bad taste to raise the subject, but anxious to know what was going to happen, finally resorted to veiled hints. “Is it likely—er—do you suppose—er—will you be shoving off soon?” The Belgians gave them angry looks and announced that King, or no King, they were fighting to the end.

He went on to describe the refugees along the road; the thousands of tanks, lorries and field guns that had to be abandoned in the fields. He said a good many villages and towns were being cleared of civilians, but the strangest evacuation he saw was that of a French Trappist Monastery. As the Trappists were vowed to silence, the whole thing was carried out by frantic signs and gestures.

Although his own particular unit had been fighting one of the last rearguard actions, he minimized the part they had played. When I asked him if he’d come face to face with the Germans, he replied: “Only once. A lot of them came over a hill and what an extraordinary sight they were. They were wearing the most peculiar uniforms. Sort of grey trousers and strange-looking ties. They looked like Eton boys.”

Basil Dufferin, also at lunch, made an ill attempt at humour. “Could they run as fast?”

“Yes, thank God!”

Now if you hadn’t taken into account that Lord Sysonby was an Englishman, you might have thought the whole retreat through Flanders to Dunkirk was one hilarious episode after another, and that his own particular rôle was one of a detached observer. But because he was an Englishman, you weren’t surprised to read in The Times a few weeks later that he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to get to France. When the B.E.F. collapsed I made application to go into the French Army zone. The French Ministry of Information told me that although it was impossible to accredit me officially, they undoubtedly would be able to arrange a “tour” of the front. The days passed however, and I heard nothing further. Finally, on Monday morning June 10th, the Ministry rang up, suggesting that I should go to Paris and arrange the final details there. The French Consul stamped my visa: “Good for one month”; that was four days before the Germans occupied the capital.

At the time it didn’t seem extravagant, for the English papers were maintaining a persistent optimism. Although General Weygand had issued a desperate appeal in his Order of the Day, Sunday, twenty-four hours previously (“We have reached the last quarter of an hour. Stand firm”), the Monday headlines of The Daily Telegraph read: “French Hold German Onslaught. Heaviest Defence in History. Nazi Prisoners tell of Serious Setback. Aisne Attacks Wholly Stemmed.”

Also on the front page was the following despatch:

It looked as though Paris would stand for a while. My chances of getting there however, seemed slim; for that night the Italians entered the war, the Germans crossed the Seine thirty miles south-east of Rouen, and Mr. Rogers of Cook’s Travel Bureau telephoned to say all planes had been suspended. That day however, I lunched with Baba and Fruity Metcalfe. Lord Halifax was there and I took heart from his remark: “I haven’t any reason to be optimistic, but I have a feeling from now on things will take a turn for the better.”

Perhaps, I thought, I’ll make it after all. Sure enough, the following morning Mr. Rogers rang at nine-thirty and said a plane was leaving and could I be at the Imperial Airways Office in twenty minutes? I was still in bed. I rang every bell in the house, flung things haphazardly into a suitcase, pulled on a dress and bolted out of the door. I made it. Half an hour later I was in a bus, headed for Croydon.

It was only then that I had a chance to look at the papers. In the Telegraph I read:

A backs-to-the-wall stand before the gates of Paris. The siege might last for days.