Secret Letters

by John Willis

  Peter did not mention his ‘girlfriend’ for some time. He tackled me the evening before the cocktail party.

  Blatchford leant against the sideboard, frowning. Then he cleared the wrinkles away with a sweep of his hand, raised his eyebrows and looked me straight in the eye. ‘My girlfriend’s coming to the cocktail party tomorrow night, Geoff… I feel she’s going to speak to you. She knows that you’re my friend and that I listen to you… tell her what you think, Geoff. I met her at the pub and we somehow hit it off. I didn’t think it mattered at the time. Some days later she told me she was married. I didn’t know she was married until something had bound us together. I feel it’s wrong, Geoff. If I go on there’ll be a disaster. You must help me out of this, Geoff.’

  Clearly, Blatchford trusted Myers saying, ‘there’s something deep within you that you can never kid.’

  I was flustered and a bit perplexed. ‘What’s the husband like?’ I asked. Blatchford shook his head. ‘That’s the trouble. He’s all right. She says she’s very fond of him and says he’s a fine chap. He’s joined up and is somewhere in the north of England. If he were a shit I wouldn’t mind but now I’m the shit. You must talk to her, Geoff.’

  Everyone was in party spirits. There was copious amounts of alcohol and the dreary mess had been decorated with palms. It didn’t take long for Blatchford’s girlfriend, Betty, to single Myers out in the crowded anteroom. Myers was embarrassed and unsure what to say. He thought that it was nothing to do with him.

  ‘Oh yes it is,’ said Betty,’ you’re his best friend and you influence him. I must tell you all about it.’ I hurried out of the crowded room. Betty followed me quickly and tucked her arm under mine. We walked along the passage into the ladies’ room which had been set up as a cocktail bar and was to be opened in an hour’s time. It was empty. What a relief!

  Betty sat on the bar. In her habitual direct manner she charged in again. ‘I’m a Catholic. I don’t know if you knew that. I was an idealist. Now I’m the other thing. You know what I mean? The opposite to idealist, what’s it called? Oh, yes, fatalist. I’m a fatalist now.

  ‘I loved my husband and I wanted children badly. They did not come at first. I waited … I waited,’ she continued and looked up at me pathetic and appealing. ‘At last I had two lovely twin boys. They were…’

  The conversation was interrupted by two young pilots looking for bottles of alcohol.

  When they had shut the door, Betty, who was almost in tears, grabbed hold of both my arms for support and, taking no notice of the interruption, continued. ‘Those lovely little babies of mine both died a few days after they were born. There was no reason to do that. God wouldn’t have done that. It broke something in me.’

  Betty’s story was interrupted yet again. This time it was the genial mess secretary who had popped into the room for a drink. Quite unaware of the emotion that was swirling through the room he insisted that Betty and Geoff join him in a sherry. As soon as he could, Myers escaped to the ping-pong room which had been converted into the cloakroom for the evening.

  Betty picked up the bits of her appeal and said, ‘How can I feel the same as before, Geoff? It wasn’t fair. I was longing for those little boys.’

  ‘You have been through a terrible time,’ I blurted out, ‘I can understand what a gap it must have made in your life.’

  ‘I have a friend who had three miscarriages… but mine were alive, Geoff. Now this has happened with Cowboy… that’s why I have become a fatalist.’

  ‘It’s not for me to approve or not approve. All I care is that Cowboy can go on with his work and hold his head high. The trouble is that he is miserable over all this, utterly miserable, and I believe you are too.’

  ‘No I’m not, Geoff,’ she said, ‘I’m dreadfully happy and so is Cowboy.’

  That evening Freddy Wallis, the adjutant, was in a state.

  The dance music was jerking out and the couples moved swiftly round. Freddy saw me and said, ‘It’s awful, I have only had two or three whiskies tonight and I’m not tiddly, but I know something dreadful is happening outside my room. There are spies in this place, Geoff. I know I heard German just outside my door.’

  Myers suggested the possibility that it might have been batmen, several of whom were Irish, talking in Gaelic.

  Freddy was immensely relieved. Two Irishmen had been on duty in his wing last night and had been having a chat in Irish. He was as pleased as a child who gets into a nice warm bed after a frightening run in the dark.

  A few days later, Myers wrote in his notebooks about Betty once again.

  My Darlings,

  Peter Blatchford has been going to Norwich of an evening and returning the next morning early. He has been looking more and more glum and has been drinking heavily. He has not exactly been avoiding me, but things have been different. We have not been able to look each other in the face quite so clearly. When we were alone together I said to him, ‘You made a bloody fool of me the other day, Peter. I ought to have known better. In the ordinary way I would have kept well out of that business with Betty, but as you appealed to me to say what I thought I did so. After thinking it over I can’t help feeling that the whole thing was a bit absurd. I don’t suppose you meant to make a fool of me but it looks as if it was a bit of a frame-up on Betty’s part.’

  After that I talked of something else.

  87Margot Myers memoir, translated by her daughter, Anne

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In France, Margot and her children survived the winter. At one point the electricity was cut off for a fortnight. On her trips into a local town or village she noticed an increase in German propaganda and a resulting rise in anti-British feeling. Newspapers had turned against Jews. Her cousin, like her aunt, now identified as a Pétainist.

  Her Uncle Guy visited Beaurepaire and had been full of stories of Jews – even children – being rounded up in Paris. ‘That’s when I made up my mind I was going to leave.’88 Margot realised she had to escape, somehow. Her mother tried briefly to deter her, saying that the children would be safe where they were and that it would be more dangerous to try to escape. But Margot begged her mother not to hinder her. She knew that she needed every ounce of courage and confidence to carry her escape plan through. Her mother said no more.

  One day in January, 1941, Margot received a surprising but rather non-committal letter sent via Portugal from her mother-in-law in England. She wondered at the blandness of the anodyne letter, until she understood. The letter was not from her mother-in-law at all but from Geoffrey. At the beginning of the war they had agreed a simple code between them but this was the first message she had received from England for more than six months, and she had never used the code before. She tried to remember what it was and then she finally recalled it. A German codebreaker would not have found it troublesome. Later her son Robert worked it out. The date at the top of the letter referred to words, so a letter sent on the fourth day of the month meant the message was to be understood by connecting every fourth word. Margot fell upon the letter with glee. The message from her husband was simple. It said, ‘Get out. Go to Lisbon.’

  At the same time, Geoff was desperately trying to find out more about what was really happening to British women in France. He took a couple of days’ leave to go down to London from Coltishall.

  On the eve of my trip to London I read the following in The Times:

  British subjects in Paris. About 3,000 interned at Besançon.

  Myers also noted a statement from the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, in a written reply to a question about British arrests in France. The statement said

  On December 5 and the following five days a large number of British women of all ages and men over the age of sixty-five were arrested by the German authorities in Paris and were sent to the Caserne Vauban at Besançon, France, for internment. During the process of arrest and internment the United States Embassy in Paris kept in touch with the German authorities by personal visits and by telephone and d
id everything possible to relieve the hardships involved in this sudden and widespread measure of internment.

  Doctors, German Red Cross nurses and special food for mothers and children were dispatched by the German authorities and, although sleeping facilities for the first few days were not sufficient, by December 15 everything had been organised and each internee had a bed. In addition to the German Red Cross nurses there is a large number of English nurses and nursing nuns among the internees. The Caserne is heated and health conditions are good. Mothers with children under sixteen and women over sixty are to be released, unless there are special reasons for the detention. Released internees will not be allowed to return to their homes, but will be required to select new residences in the eastern part of France.

  There are approximately 3,000 men, women and children at Caserne Vauban. 685 men who had hitherto not been interned at Saint-Denis have now been interned at Drancy.

  Drancy, in north-eastern Paris, was soon to become the notorious internment camp where thousands of Jews were incarcerated, before being shipped off to concentration camps like Auschwitz. During the war more than 67,000 Jews were deported from Drancy to extermination camps.

  For Myers, the speech from Anthony Eden outlining the likelihood of release for women and young children, was of comfort.

  I am greatly relieved, because at least I felt that you were not suffering from hunger and cold, and that there was a good chance of your release.

  So Myers headed for London, caught somewhere between anxiety and relief, determined to find out more.

  A kind lady at the British Red Cross Society told me all she knew about conditions in France, but could add nothing to the Foreign Secretary’s statement. She said she would let me know as soon as lists were received of the names of the internees. She took out a little notebook marked ‘Promises’ and wrote my name down in it.

  I knew the poor, tired woman had probably repeated the same thing to hundreds of anxious inquirers and had reassured them to the best of her ability. I was moved by her goodness and tried to slip ten shillings in the collection box, then felt foolish because it wouldn’t go through the hole which was meant only for coins. She helped it down with a smile.

  Myers continued his inquiries by visiting the Foreign Office.

  The official, a pleasant ex-serviceman from the last war, showed me the boundaries of the territory in which the British women who were released would be allowed to live. ‘It looks as if it may just include Moulins,’ he said, ‘and they may not have interned with your wife at all. Of course, you never know. They may have arrested her out of sheer cussedness and would then move her. We don’t know the position yet, but we are waiting for names from the American Embassy.’

  Geoff then went to see his friend, John, whose name he had given his wife as a possible point of contact. At John’s flat in Lancaster Gate there was good news waiting for Myers. Two telegrams had arrived earlier that day, sent on a circuitous route via a friend in Clermont-Ferrand. Margot had finally managed to smuggle out messages to the man in Clermont for onward delivery to her husband in the UK.

  From these telegrams I knew that you were still at Beaurepaire [as recently as] December, as it said that a letter had been sent to me then. I knew that conditions were excellent on the farm then, and that you are well. You asked whether I still advised you to return. I was keyed up with excitement and hope.

  It was the first news I had received since September 10 and it came at a moment when I was most anxious about you all. I could not tell, however, how long it has taken you to get the message through to unoccupied France. All I know was that you had written, or got our friends in Clermont-Ferrand to write to me, some time in December. I knew that the arrests had taken place between December 5 and 15. I could not tell if you had been interned after the message had been passed through. My impression was that you were still free.

  Myers discussed the reply with his friend, John.

  Good-hearted John was as excited over the telegrams as I. He screwed his eyes up in delight and laughed. ‘You needn’t worry about what Margot will do at her end. I know how sensible she is,’ he said. ‘If you’ve any fear about that end, all I can say is that I know your wife better than you do.’

  The men reasoned that if the question was ‘Do you advise getting out?’ it meant that Margot had worked out a way of crossing from occupied France into the unoccupied or free zone to the south.

  I thought it over… You would know how to cross the border into unoccupied territory without undue risk. If you were still free the Germans would be bound to find out sooner or later that you were the wife of an Englishman and they would then discover that you were the wife of a Jew and a journalist, the combination of all that is hated by the Nazis. They would have grounds for arresting you, saying that you concealed your identity. You would be taken away from the babies, as I feared all along. The course was obvious.

  An hour later I wired, ‘Advise immediate return.’ I felt happy about this and slept well.

  Myers had talked to his journalist friends in Europe and worked out that the safest route to the UK was to cross the demarcation line into the unoccupied zone and then to travel by train down through France, probably to Toulouse. Then, by train again, to Barcelona and Madrid. From Spain it should be reasonably straightforward to get into neutral Portugal where he knew that seats on a plane or ship to the UK might be available.

  It looked simple on paper but he knew that it wasn’t. He had enormous faith in the courage and good sense of his wife. However, she had two young children to look after and having a Jewish husband who was also in the RAF put the family at permanent risk. It could go wrong at any time, from the first day trying to secretly cross the demarcation line, to the final leg of the journey from Lisbon, especially if that had to go by ship.

  Myers also overestimated how easy it would be for Margot and her two young children to slip across the demarcation line without being arrested. Knowledge of how to achieve this was not widely accessible because secrecy was paramount to the resistance efforts.

  Margot Myers also realised that she could not evade the Nazis for long. A poster was put up in the local village. It said, ‘People who know anyone who is English should denounce them.’ When Margot was anxiously reading this, a neighbour shouted to her in a loud voice, ‘What are you going to do about it?’89 Fortunately, no one heard, but it was time to move on.

  Early in 1941, Margot Myers, by now fully determined to escape, noticed that the grocer’s son in the local village of Lucenay had disappeared. The grocer, Monsieur Duguet, had an unofficial reputation as an expert in smuggling people across the demarcation line. Margot knew that the grocer’s boy hadn’t been picked up by the Germans, so she presumed that he was in danger in another way and had needed to escape. Perhaps he was an active member of the resistance? Or perhaps he had just crossed the border to resume his studies as a clockmaker? She did not know and did not ask.

  At a quiet moment, when there were no other customers in his shop, she approached the grocer herself. Monsieur Duguet had qualms even though he had known Margot’s family for many years. His wife made the decision for him as Margot revealed, ‘[She] was very nice and also intelligent and energetic. When I told her about my plans, and while her husband was hesitating, she took things in hand.’90 They said it would be very tricky but that he would try to arrange it.

  For some months there had been a number of ways to illegally cross the demarcation line at Moulins – by foot, by boat, even hidden in barrels or carts of manure. Some smugglers took these risks for money; others, like the grocer who helped the Myers family, as acts of defiance or resistance.

  In Moulins itself, in 1941, the dungeons at La Mal Coiffée had become an official German military prison with Jews and resistance fighters the main inmates. Margot timed her escape well. Maybe she sensed that the German military prison was quickly becoming a stronghold of the Gestapo and a place of physical persecution. ‘The instruments of torture at the
Mal Coiffée are very simple: they are the revolver butt, the tongs, the nerve, the wire, the bathtub and, above all, the hunger, the thirst, moral torture… The Germans take revenge by manual correction… punches that hurt, assault, sometimes kill.’91

  In London, Myers was feeling less confident following another visit to the Foreign Office, the day after he had sent his message to Margot in France advising her to escape. He told the official what he had decided.

  The official was dubious. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘a number of people have been smuggled across the border at Moulins but I don’t see how your wife will be able to manage with two babies. The difficulties are very great. She might dress up as a peasant woman and amble across the fields or get into a hay cart. The people down there know the ways.’

  I was starting to get anxious. ‘Do you know if many people get caught crossing the border?’ I asked. ‘Well,’ he said, smiling uneasily, ‘we only hear of the people that get across. We don’t know what happens to the others.’

  ‘Do you think my advice was bad?’ I asked, feeling thoroughly scared by then. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘As it is she may find the task of crossing the border too difficult and will probably stay where she is, if she has not been interned. In that case, she will have tried.’

  Geoff was now in a high state of anxiety. The attempt at reassurance by the official, a kindly man, sounded hollow.

  The only thing that stuck in his mind was that a Foreign Office official considered the crossing of the border a very difficult matter. It confirmed what I had originally thought. My mind was in turmoil.

  Clearly his plan to prepare his family’s escape to England via Portugal, by obtaining visas from the American authorities, was not possible. There was no way that he could acquire visas so far in advance and, if he acted too hastily or openly now, there was a risk of compromising their safety further.