Secret Letters

by John Willis

  ‘I am afraid that you will have to wait until they get across into unoccupied territory,’ the official said kindly, ‘because if you did anything now, you would compromise the Americans who are helping us, and also your wife. I think you will have to wait to hear from her before doing anything.’

  What had I done? Perhaps I had advised you to move away from a safe place into danger and you would get caught crossing the border.

  ‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘she will probably not be able to bring her British passport with her and she may find herself in occupied France without any papers.’ After thinking things over the official replied, ‘We can let the American authorities know and ask them to issue her with a temporary passport. That will be all right.’

  Geoff had an American friend, John Elliott, a journalist on the New York Herald Tribune who was based in Vichy, where Pétain’s government had their headquarters. Vichy was also not too far from the border with occupied France. Myers debated with himself and his friend in London whether to contact his Elliott or not. He did not want to compromise his American friend, nor his friends in Clermont-Ferrand, if he used them as a conduit for a message again. For the moment he did nothing.

  The more I thought about it, the greater the danger of crossing the border seemed to grow. I had pictures of you and the children being stopped by German sentries. And then, suppose you did get across, it was a toss-up as to whether unoccupied France would stay free for long. You might get caught while trying to obtain visas for England. And if you did reach England you might arrive just before an invasion and I would have nowhere for you to go. I might have been killed, and then you would have left home to feel isolated in our beleaguered island.

  Your second telegram made me think you were in Beaurepaire. Perhaps I have done the wrong thing. Something inside me kept repeating, ‘He who hesitates is lost.’ But I could not help revolving over and over again in my mind the picture of your being caught at the border of being overtaken by an invasion of unoccupied France.

  The newspapers were reporting that the Nazis were threatening to occupy the whole of France. Time was short for the escape plan to succeed. Geoffrey and his friend debated through all the different options for hours but, in the end, concluded that the correct decision had been made.

  In France, Margot Myers was already confirming her plans to leave. She arranged another discreet meeting with the grocer and his wife. Monsieur Duguet said that although it was difficult he was working on a plan. His wife told Margot that they would introduce her to a gamekeeper and his wife from nearby Dompierre. He was responsible for land on both sides of the demarcation line.

  ‘Thanks to their grocery business the Duguets had a small petrol allowance and went once a week to Dompierre to replenish their stocks. So one day they took me along to meet the gamekeeper and his wife. I explained the situation and things were soon settled. There had been no mention of money.’92

  A few days later the Myers received a message from the grocer and his wife to meet on a certain date, ‘Don’t bring any luggage,’ they had told me, ‘bring only your passports and indispensable papers. My wife will take you on the road and I’ll slip through the woods with the papers. Dress as though you are going from one farm to the other. You must especially look as if you are not going off on a trip. The family should just appear normal, no luggage, no special clothes; they just needed to look as if they were going for a walk, and to have passports and other essential papers.’

  Finally, the day came to escape, ‘Leaving Beaurepaire was terrible. We said goodbye to my mother and grandmother. Aunt Marcelle accompanied us on her bike. I was pedalling too, with the two kids behind in the trailer. When we reached the rise before La Chapelle, Aunt Marcelle stopped. We said goodbye, and, weeping, she watched us continue on our way.’93

  Robert, who was only four years old at the time, recalled, ‘At Beaurepaire everybody was weeping. It was difficult to leave. I remember Beaurepaire gradually receding as I looked back from the trailer behind my mother’s bicycle.’94

  At that moment, as her aunt cycled back towards the family home, Margot had no idea when, or if, she would ever see her mother, grandmother and aunt again. England, and her husband, seemed impossibly distant. She was caught between wanting to be with her French family and needing to be safe with her husband once again. Now, she was responsible for two young children, with thousands of miles of danger ahead.

  After a few miles of hard cycling, Margot and her two small children arrived at the grocer’s. Leaving the bicycle behind they climbed into his van and were driven south to Dompierre. There, he introduced them again to the gamekeeper responsible for the cross-border forest. The safest way across the demarcation line was through that forest, but if they were to be caught it would be obvious that the gamekeeper had arranged their escape and they could not compromise his safety.

  The only other option was to smuggle themselves over at a quiet remote crossing. ‘The gamekeeper and his wife greeted us kindly. We ate lunch with them. I gave them a good amount of cash in an envelope. They accepted, but told us that was not why they were helping me. I told them I knew it and thanked them warmly.’95

  The family said a grateful goodbye to the grocer and handed the gamekeeper their precious passports which he hid under his belt. In return, Margot was given the identity card of an acquaintance of the gamekeeper who lived in the free zone. Margot was to assume the identity of the other woman, Marie-Louise, should the Myers family be stopped and questioned by the Nazis on guard – and meanwhile, the gamekeeper would meet the family on the other side of the demarcation line.

  Margot took one look at the identity card and prayed she would not be stopped. The card did not even have a photograph and, if questioned, Margot was instructed to say it had peeled off. No one would believe this story for a second, she thought, but was determined to carry on.

  In 1941 the border at the demarcation line was marked by a large notice, headed Avis aux Juifs, ‘Notice to Jews’. ‘It is forbidden for Jews to cross the demarcation line to visit the occupied zone of France. Jews are those who belong to the Jewish religion. Any Infringement of this Order shall be punished by imprisonment or fine.’

  Margot took charge of two-year-old Anne in her pushchair, while the gamekeeper’s wife pushed Robert on his bicycle. They walked for several kilometres along the crossing, much of it on a muddy footpath where they met no one else.

  One of Robert’s earliest memories, aged nearly five, was how cold and wet they were. ‘I still remember that the rain was so hard it seemed to be bouncing upwards. I asked the gamekeeper’s wife about it. She said it meant that the rain would stop soon. I didn’t understand how dangerous it was but somehow I understood that we had to behave.’96

  The Moulin de la Cropte, very close to the demarcation line itself, was a well-known staging post for one of the passeurs, or smugglers, who specialised in slipping escapers across the line. Robert Myers thinks it is possible that the family sheltered at the Moulin for a time.

  The rain thundered down, soaking the small band of escapees to the skin. Luckily the border guards were so focused on staying dry they missed the woman with her two half-English children as they slipped quietly across, very wet but safe.

  Margot did not know then just how remarkably fortunate she and her children had been. A Jewish woman, Julie Abid, was arrested a year later as she tried to cross the demarcation line at Moulins with her daughter, Germaine. They were imprisoned at La Mal Coiffée before being transported to Drancy and then onto Auschwitz. The woman who may have sheltered them at the Moulins de la Cropte, Catherine Gouby, a member of the resistance at Dompierre, was also arrested in 1942 and was incarcerated in the dungeons at La Mal Coiffée. Later in the war she was sent to the camp at Ravensbrück.97

  In fact, Margot had got even closer to capture than she knew. A few days after the family had secretly crossed the demarcation line, the Germans came to her village and demanded that the mayor tell them where an English
woman called Mrs Myers lived. Margot had escaped just in time, but the dangers were not over yet.

  The family were wet and rain-sodden following their border-crossing, so they sheltered in a cafe in a small village just across the border. The owner, however, who was fed up with refugees, threw them back out into the rain. At that moment, fortunately, the gamekeeper arrived, having made his way across the border through the forest. He swapped the French identity card back for Margot’s passport. Then he found a car that would take the family on to Vichy. But Margot instinctively did not trust the driver who she thought was ‘an adventurer’.98 She did not feel safe with him and was concerned that he might inform on her by telling the authorities of the family’s whereabouts.

  She remembered, ‘The gamekeeper said to the driver, threateningly, “if anything happens to these children you’ll have to answer to me,” but I was still worried that the driver would sell us out, denounce us, inform Vichy.’

  The man stopped the car in Lapalisse to run some errands and Margot used this as an excuse to get out of the car too. She told him that she did not want to go on because the children were tired. The man looked surprised but shrugged and left. Margot was relieved that he had gone and she felt safer now. Although Anne had slept some of the way, the children were exhausted. She was too.

  They found a local hotel. Margot was fearful that the hotelier would be as hostile as the cafe-owner in the last village but the opposite was the case. No questions were asked. They had brought no luggage or spare clothes so Margot stripped the children and put them straight to bed. The woman who ran the hotel kindly offered to dry off their soaking clothes in front of the dining room stove, before the arrival of her customers.

  The next morning, the hotel helped her find a lift further into the unoccupied zone, to the house of an old friend. A young employee of the local garage drove them for a large sum of money.

  Some weeks before, Margot had received a message from an old school friend who lived on the unoccupied side – just – of the border at La Busserie. The message from her friend simply said ‘come here if you are in need.’ Margot knocked on their door. Her friends were astonished but embraced the family, ‘They welcomed us with open arms and unforgettable warmth. All this affected the young man who had brought us there. Again and again he repeated, “You’re going to be happy now, won’t you?” ’99 For the time being, at least, Margot felt her family were safe.

  In Britain, her husband knew none of this. For the rest of his short leave, he decided to visit his mother in the relatively peaceful surroundings of the Oxfordshire countryside. He needed to clear his head and think.

  In the train I went on composing telegrams. I wondered how you would cross the border. Would it be at night, after word had passed round that the roads were clear? Perhaps it would be with our friend, Georges Renard, in Clermont-Ferrand, who worked for Michelin and perhaps had retained his car for that reason. Perhaps, again, you might obtain papers under a false name or even under your own name, as a Frenchwoman. But supposing you were stopped?

  Dull, flat countryside with factories in every other field on either side of the railway line… a bomb crater here and there, and some shattered windows. Surprisingly little damage as a whole.

  Perhaps you would travel by train. Robert would be good. He would understand. Anne was too young. She might be difficult, the little darling. Supposing you were caught?

  He decided to send another telegram after all. This time to his friends in Clermont-Ferrand suggesting that they get in touch with his American journalist contact, John Elliott, in Vichy. He reasoned that if his first telegram, which urged immediate return, was deemed too dangerous by the people in Clermont-Ferrand, then they would hold on to it, rather than try to smuggle it to Margot in the occupied zone.

  When I passed the telegram through, I felt better but not reassured. I waded in gumboots through the yard to a black cottage and found Mother. I could not conceal my troubled state, so I told her what had happened. Poor Mother had enough worries already… Were you still at the farm or had you been taken away before receiving my message? Would you get through? Should I not have sent a message hinting at caution? Should I send another telegram? Something again said inside me, ‘He who hesitates is lost.’

  In Oxfordshire, Myers visited the cottage he had imagined living in one day with his family, if they were ever reunited. Now it was a damp wreck.

  This is the home I thought would be so lovely for our little family. The rain came through the roof… everything was damp. The paper was peeling off the walls in the sitting room. The cows had got through the hedge and had eaten the cauliflowers.

  Where were you? My calmness had gone, I would have to pull myself together. Perhaps you were interned because you married me? When we married it seemed right to us.

  I could not write to you in the evenings. I was too perturbed and realised I would have to wait. I was glad to go back to the squadron and find plenty of work to do. I am with the boys again now.

  88Memoirs of Margot Myers translated by her daughter, Anne

  89Margot Myers, interview with Janet Willis

  90Memoirs of Margot Myers translated by her daughter, Anne

  91Jacky Tronel blog: Prison History and Military Justice. He is quoting a former prisoner, Yvonne Henri Monceau in her 1945 memoir Une Prison militaire allemande, à Moulins: La Mal-Coiffée

  92Memoirs of Margot Myers translated by her daughter, Anne

  93Memoirs of Margot Myers translated by her daughter, Anne

  94Interview with Author 2020

  95Memoirs of Margot Myers translated by her daughter, Anne

  96Interview with Robert Myers, February 2020

  97Amis de la Fondation pour la memoire de la Deportation de l’Allier

  98Interview with Janet Willis

  99Memoirs of Margot Myers translated by her daughter, Anne

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  On January 26 1941, Bob Stanford Tuck and Peter Blatchford flew over to RAF Bircham Newton near King’s Lynn to attend an investiture by King George VI, then at Sandringham. Tuck received the DSO and a bar to the DFC. The citation read, ‘This officer has commanded his squadron with great success, and his outstanding leadership, courage and skill has been reflected in its high morale and efficiency…’

  But this was just a brief respite from the continuing struggles of the war.

  My darlings,

  Sergeant Barnes has been promoted to Pilot Officer. He has come over into the officers’ mess and is now trying hard to stop calling the other officers ‘sir’. Today, he and another pilot, a Czech from Prague [Sergeant Vaclav Brejcha], shot down a Dornier 17 bomber into the sea. It had just dropped bombs in the main street of Lowestoft, killing fourteen persons, and was making for Holland. After they had made three attacks each the bomber, which had come down from 3,000 feet to sea level, dove into the water. One of the Germans jumped when the plane was 150 feet above the sea. He disappeared and so did the bottom rear gunner. The top rear gunner’s body was found floating in the water. He had received a number of bullets through his head. The pilot was saved. He said that he had dropped no bombs. He said the right thing.

  It is satisfactory to write combat reports about victories which are clear-cut and in which we have no losses. The thing can be treated as a sporting game, but you mustn’t forget that the score is in points of death. If you start thinking about that, you feel the gloom floating heavily about a German pilots’ mess, just the other side of the Channel. A good comrade, a good fighter, who won’t return for the promised night out in Amiens or Abbeville. Perhaps he was a decent man who brought back comforts to the French family on whom he was billeted. He was probably brave. Most German pilots are brave, like our own.

  Not that such an empathetic view of enemy pilots was common. When Myers enquired if the rescue launch had been sent to search for the Germans who had crashed into the sea off Corton, near Lowestoft, he was berated by the operations officer.

  ‘Why did you
bother to ring up to find out if we had sent a launch to those buggers who crashed in the sea this afternoon, Geoff?’ one of my operations officers asked me. ‘Because there was a chance they were alive,’ I said. ‘We would have been better off letting them all drown,’ he replied. The operations officer looked at me angrily. ‘If you think they deserve any consideration after killing civilians in the streets of Lowestoft, dropping bombs in the middle of the town, you’ve got a funny idea of war.’

  I thought of our pilots being sent to attack Channel Ports. They too dropped bombs on coastal towns. Sometimes they did not get back, probably shot down somewhere over the sea. Leave the buggers to drown? A slow struggle against the tide. Icy waters gradually numbing the fingers, then the limbs. General numbness and death.

  ‘Perhaps I have,’ I said, ‘but I’m glad to say it’s shared by the authorities who have ordered the rescue of German pilots from the sea wherever possible.’

  Some people have never thought about what we are fighting for… The will to fight in Britain existed among men who cherished freedom and were willing to pay more than lip service to common decency among peoples as well as individuals. I can hear the adjutant saying, ‘Decency in a tripe shop.’

  That’s what we want to maintain when we shoot down German bombers over the sea near our coast and suspect that some of the crew are alive.

  Pilot Officer Leslie Barnes and Sergeant Brejcha were right. One member of the Dornier that they shot down survived. It was not the pilot but the flight engineer, Waldemar Blaschyk, who parachuted into the sea. He was rescued by a vessel from Great Yarmouth and became a prisoner of war.100 Fourteen civilians had been killed by the German bombs on Lowestoft. A few months later, Sergeant Brejcha himself died when a Tiger Moth he was ferrying back to Coltishall crashed into the sea near Southwold.

  Myers also had an eye and ear for the lighter conversations on the station too.