Of War and Women

by D. Allen Henry

  Chapter 7

  Despair

  London – June 4, 1944

  Trant noticed that, by contrast to the summer of 1940, the atmosphere in London was one of great expectation. Wherever one turned these days, people were whispering excitedly among themselves. While very few people were actually aware of what precisely was about to occur, nearly everyone knew that an invasion was imminent. It was indeed an extraordinarily sharp contrast to the London of 1940.

  On this particular day General Sutherland and his son, Wing Commander Sutherland, were having lunch at his club. Lord Sutherland commented, “So, Trant, it appears that Lieutenant Delacroix has done it. Bletchley Park says that the code sent to them early this morning is genuine. We have thus broken the latest version of the Enigma code. We can now intercept any transmission between Paris and the German High Command. And the bombing not only killed General Horstmüller, it also killed an additional twenty five German officers, and wounded perhaps as many as seventy-five others. German Headquarters in Paris has been thrown into an uproar at precisely the right moment for the invasion. I’m certain that thousands of lives will be saved due to her heroics. That young lady deserves a medal.”

  “Yes, I must admit that she has exceeded my every expectation. She is an amazing woman. Whatever she sets out to do, she seems to accomplish,” Trant responded grimly.

  “So exactly how did she get it? Do you know?”

  “You mean the code? I’m really not quite certain. What I do know is that my contact says that she put on a diversionary show at German Headquarters in Paris.”

  “What sort of show?”

  “I’ve no further information, but I think I may have an idea what it might have been,” Trant volunteered.

  “Well?”

  “I’d rather not say, sir.”

  “If I am not mistaken, isn’t she an accomplished singer? It must have been quite a show for her to distract the entire Command staff long enough for the resistance to break in and steal the code, not to mention setting off the bomb.”

  “I quite agree, sir. And to top it off, she escaped into the Paris underground and is apparently making her way westward at this very moment.”

  “She’s quite a resourceful woman, Trant. She seems to care not a single whit for rules, if you follow me.”

  “Yes, of course, but the important thing to remember is what you said. Due to her efforts many lives will be saved over the coming months.”

  “Quite so, quite so,” the senior Sutherland replied.

  Rouen – June 5, 1944

  Felicité was secreted away from Paris proper by the French resistance upon her escape from German Headquarters. She was first transported to a safe house in Morainvilliers, where she spent her first night on the run. Felicité took the opportunity to cut her hair short and dye it back to its original blonde color. Since the fictitious person Martine Peletier was now a fugitive, she destroyed her false papers and reassumed her true identity of Felicité Delacroix.

  With further help from the resistance, Felicité was able to make her way to Rouen within twenty-four hours of the attack on German Headquarters in Paris. Although she had no idea exactly when or where it would commence, she was determined to be as near as possible to the coast when the Allied invasion finally began. Unfortunately, her vehicle was stopped at a German road block that was heretofore unknown to the resistance fighters.

  Something untoward appeared to be up, for the Germans seemed to be checking everyone who was going into or out of the city. Thus, she and the other two inhabitants of her car were required to park their vehicle and enter a building, whereupon they were forced to stand in a line of about a dozen people. It appeared that all was going smoothly, as each person was allowed to pass. Thus, she and her fellow conspirators determined to bide their time and hope for the best.

  “Papers, please!” the guard said to her as she reached the head of the line. Felicité handed him her papers. “What are you doing coming here from Paris, Fräulein,” he inquired.

  “I did not come here from Paris. I came from Morainvilliers, where I live. I am here to visit my aunt,” she replied.

  “And who is your aunt?” he queried.

  “Madame Antonia San Michel,” she replied.

  “Sit down here and wait, Fräulein,” he replied. Felicité was thus the only person who was held for further questioning. Under the circumstances, her traveling companions were forced to go on ahead without her.

  Felicité waited for several hours, finally falling asleep. By the time she awoke it had grown completely dark. She waited a bit longer, at which point another soldier came forward and inquired, “Are you Fräulein Felicité Delacroix?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Follow me!” he commanded.

  She followed him through the building to a courtyard where there were several German soldiers standing adjacent to a truck with a cloth cover.

  Her escort said to them, “This is the Jewess.”

  Taken aback, she exclaimed in denial “I am not a Jew!” but her captors ignored her denial.

  Several of the soldiers subsequently grabbed her by her arms and feet and tossed her into the truck, as if she were a rag doll. She landed on top of several other detainees who were already crowded onboard, and though their bodies broke her fall, she heard a collective groan from the throng beneath her.

  Unaware that such decorum would soon disappear altogether from her world, she murmured apologetically, “Pardonez moi!”

  Near Portsmouth – Just After Midnight June 6, 1944

  Trant buckled himself into the cockpit of the Spitfire in preparation for the night flight over the Channel. Although he had flown many times in the war, he had never actually piloted an aircraft over French soil. Tonight he would lead the escort wing for the airlift of the British 6th Airborne Division into France north of Caen. His challenge was to make sure that enemy fire of any type was drawn away from the transport aircraft that would drop the airborne troops by parachute.

  On receipt of the deployment command the entire squadron took off from the airfield, heading directly south for the Channel crossing. The flight took just under an hour, during which time the sky was quite overcast, giving Trant the distinct impression that their mission might be of no consequence to the airborne assault by the British. However, once they approached landfall, the cloud cover became somewhat broken, permitting him useful glimpses of the beach below. There were no German aircraft to be seen anywhere, but shortly after they passed the beach at Normandy the entire squadron was assaulted by a battery of anti-aircraft guns. Given that their mission was to protect the 6th Airborne, Trant gave the order over his radio to circle round and attack the anti-aircraft positions.

  Following his own order, Trant led the assault on the ground positions. Unfortunately, the broken cloud cover was quite low, making it difficult to make visual contact with the anti-aircraft batteries. Trant nevertheless led the attack formation, but his aircraft was unfortunately struck in the tail almost immediately. He climbed as quickly as he could, gaining altitude to several thousand feet, but he realized that his tail controls were jammed, thus allowing him no alternative other than to fly straight ahead. His course was southeast, meaning that the longer he flew, the further he would fly into enemy territory. He therefore radioed in his location and course and settled in for the unwelcome challenge ahead.

  He made the decision to continue flying straight ahead, thereby carrying him deeper into occupied territory. Because of his year-long handling of Felicité, he was well acquainted with the methods of the French Resistance. He was therefore aware that the German military would be concentrated along the coastline, with the resistance more likely to be found within the interior. Thus, he flew onwards, heading for Rouen. He flew directly over the city, observing the Seine three thousand feet below. Once he had cleared the city, he flew onward at treetop level, searching for a safe place to land. Eventually spott
ing an open field ahead, he cut his engine and landed his aircraft without injury or incident.

  It wasn’t his lucky night. By the time he managed to get free of his plane, a squad of German soldiers was upon him. He was immediately taken prisoner and placed in the back of a truck. Over the course of the night two other pilots were captured and placed in the vehicle with him, all three assuming that they would be transported to a prisoner camp on the morrow.

  East of Rouen – Morning, June 6, 1944

  Felicité awoke from a fitful sleep, pain wracking every joint in her body. She gingerly attempted to adjust to a more comfortable position, but the tiniest movement caused her to encroach on the suffering of the others within the bed of the truck. The truck had driven for perhaps an hour, but then it had halted for the duration of the night. Because the going was extremely slow, Felicité reckoned they had only gone a few miles southeast of Rouen before the truck had halted beside the roadway.

  Shortly before dawn she began to hear the rumble of distant gunfire – the invasion of Normandy had most likely begun, and they were now being transported to the east, away from the Allied Army. Shortly after sunrise, as the truck was driving very slowly through a countryside intersection, she was gazing out the back of the truck when she saw a pair of German soldiers guarding three prisoners. Suddenly realizing that one of them was Trant, she screamed at the top of her lungs, “Trant! Bloody hell! Trant!”

  That Same Morning

  Trant and his fellow prisoners hopped down from the transport truck, which had broken down just after daybreak. They were subsequently ordered to wait on the side of the road while the vehicle was repaired. They had been standing on the side of the road for perhaps a quarter of an hour when a large truck approached them from the northwest. As it passed them by Trant stared uneasily at the captives in the back of the truck, wondering what their fate was intended to be.

  Suddenly he heard a voice from within the truck scream, “Trant! Bloody hell! Trant!” And there, not twenty feet away, was the very image of Felicité. On impulse he made a mad dash for the truck, but one of the soldiers tripped him with his rifle, sending him sprawling. He managed to rise to his knees just long enough to see her fleeting face as the truck drove away. Waving with all his might, he called to her, “Felicité!” but by then the truck had disappeared round the curve.

  That Same Moment

  Felicité was beside herself with a flood of emotions. On the one hand, she was painfully aware that she was moving away from everything that she valued in this world. But on the other hand, she had envisioned her most elusive and cherished desire in all the world, and in the most unlikely of places. It seemed to be a sign to her. She resolved that she must at all costs survive. She decided that it was a sign from heaven and that she therefore simply could not let anything whatsoever destroy her resolve to live.

  Eventually the truck pulled into a courtyard adjacent to a multi-story building, whereupon she heard several persons whisper in abject terror the single word Drancy. She now knew for certain that they had reached the point of no return. No one ever came back from Drancy. Though it was just a small concentration camp on the edge of Paris, it had become in the last year nothing more than an intermediate stop for transporting prisoners to the East.

  The truck gate was lowered, and three soldiers immediately began dragging the detainees out and tossing them to the ground, oblivious to the injuries that their rough handling inflicted on their captives. Once everyone was unloaded from the truck, they were ordered to form a single line. An SS officer came forward and carefully examined each of the detainees. When he came to Felicité, he paused and carefully pushed her chin up with his riding crop. He examined her face and, inspecting her from head to foot, he uttered, “Ja,” and strode onwards. A soldier immediately grabbed her, dragging her away from the cowering group of detainees. She resisted him in vain, causing her to stumble and fall to her knees. At this he simply ignored her and, dragging her roughly to her feet, he forced her to stumble onward in his wake.

  She was eventually pushed into a small room where a rather large and sinister looking woman grabbed her harshly by the arm and forced her to sit in front of a small dressing table. The woman used broken French to instruct her to ‘make herself look nice’. Trembling with fear, Felicité did her best to apply makeup despite her deplorable state. The woman then instructed her to remove her clothes. Recalling her vow to herself that very morning, Felicité reluctantly followed orders, after which the woman opened several drawers in a cabinet and made her to understand that she should rummage through the clothes within and find the best garments for herself. Suspecting all the while where these clothes must have come from, she nonetheless clothed herself as attractively as possible.

  As she was completing her task the SS officer who had picked her out of the detainees in the courtyard suddenly entered the small room, brusquely examining her yet again. “She will do,” he said to the woman, “Bring her to the dining room in precisely fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes, sir,” the woman responded obediently.

  The woman subsequently left the room, locking Felicité within. She returned a short time later and, grasping Felicité by the hand, she dragged her roughly from the room and commanded, “Now, you will follow me, fräulein.” Felicité did her best to keep up. They raced down a hallway and halted at a door, at which point the woman turned and instructed her, “Now, fräulein, you will do exactly as the commandant tells you to do, understand?”

  “Yes,” Felicité responded meekly.

  “I think that you do not understand me, fräulein,” the woman retorted, “What I mean to say is, if you do not do exactly as the commandant says, then afterwards I will beat you mercilessly until you are dead. Do you understand me, fräulein?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good, now please enter the room, and smile!”

  Attempting to smile as best she could, Felicité pushed the door open and entered. Inside the smoke filled room she could see a group of perhaps a dozen SS officers who seemed to be finishing up what appeared to her to be a dining extravaganza. She stood in one corner frozen in fear, but suddenly noticing her, the selfsame SS officer who had previously examined her exclaimed, “Ah, here she is commandant.” He rose from his seat and came towards her, inquiring as he did so, “What is your name, fräulein?”

  “Felicité.”

  He turned towards the officer at the head of the table and announced, “Her name is Felicité, commandant.”

  The officer that he had spoken to now commanded her, “Excellent, please come here, Fräulein Felicité,” and, seeing her hesitation, he restated politely, “That’s right. You need not be afraid. Please, come here.”

  She walked slowly to the far end of the room, uneasily approaching the commandant. He held out his hand to her, saying, “I am Colonel Kimmel, commandant of Drancy. Welcome to our Camp for Interns.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Felicité responded nervously.

  “Tell me, fräulein, we have been discussing an important point among ourselves this evening. The Führer says that all Jewish women are asexual. This seems to make no sense, for how could the Jewish people still exist if that were the case? Fräulein, what is your opinion on this subject?”

  Felicité was thinking about what the woman had told her. She could guess where this line of discussion was going, and it wasn’t good at all. Still hoping for some means of escape, she therefore replied evasively, “I’m not sure I understand, sir.”

  Commandant Kimmel immediately slapped her so hard that she almost fell down. Rising up, she held her face where he had struck her, at which he exclaimed vehemently, “I shall require your responses to improve markedly, fräulein. Do you understand?”

  All hope having now disappeared, she responded submissively, “Yes, Commandant Kimmel.”

  He turned to his fellow officers and offered, “Perhaps she doesn’t know the answer to my questio
n, gentlemen. After all, she is only half Jewish.” The men laughed at this, and he continued with, “Fräulein, we find ourselves in a conundrum. We have discussed this unusual situation among ourselves, and we fear that only you can answer this question: which half of you is Jewish? Would you say the top half, or the bottom half?” and he said this last with a most sinister grin. Not bothering to await her answer, he queried with incongruous politeness, “Perhaps you would be so kind as to expose for us the part of you that is not Jewish, purely for clinical purposes, you understand?”

  Felicité stood frozen in fear, unable to even imagine for a moment what Commandant Kimmel was suggesting. Seeing her hesitation, he struck her with his riding whip, causing her to wince in pain.

  “Well?” he queried expectantly.

  “Commandant Kimmel, I would be honored to do your bidding,” she responded disconsolately, all the while doing her best to retain her appealing smile.

  “Excellent!” he responded, thenceforth commanding, “Please, fräulein, take my hand.” As she took his hand apprehensively he stood up and, pushing his chair to the edge of the table, he suggested politely, “Please, step up onto the chair,” and he followed with, “Now, please - step onto the table,” at which she stepped timidly onto the table.

  “Please, now stand in the middle of the table, fräulein.” She followed his command, no longer in any doubt whatsoever as to his intention. “Now, I repeat, fräulein, would you please be so kind as to reveal the half of you that is not Jewish!” and this time he said it much more forcefully.

  Felicité closed her eyes and, taking a deep breath, she removed her blouse. “Excellent! He exclaimed cheerfully. “Now the remainder, please,” at which she removed her brassiere.

  “Excellent, fräulein. Now, if you would, please turn full circle so that everyone can observe your Aryan genetics,” and as she slowly turned, he observed appreciatively, “Yes, that’s good. You do learn quickly, fraülein! Excellent!”

  And when she had completed her turn, he announced, “Gentlemen, it appears that everything is in order. It certainly appears that Fräulein Felicité is not Jewish from the waist up. She is clearly a normal attractive woman from my viewpoint. What say all of you?” At this the officers applauded, signaling their macabre concurrence with his assessment.

  The men continued to ogle her appreciatively, but then the commandant expounded, “But hold on, we have nothing to compare to. It stands to reason that if Fräulein Felicité is not Jewish from the waist up, then we must conclude that she is Jewish from the waist down. Therefore, following the Führer’s thesis, she would necessarily also have to be asexual from the waist down.”

  Staring maliciously at Felicité, as if willing her to guess in advance what his next suggestion would be, he then exclaimed with a sadistic grin, “Fräulein, I’m afraid that in the interest of sound science, we must necessarily obtain experimental evidence in order to verify the Führer’s theory. Therefore, I must ask you to please expose your Jewish half.”

  Having prepared herself for his latest demand, Felicité closed her eyes for a moment, in her mind’s eye envisioning a manor in the English countryside, a game of tennis being played on the court, and in her mind she was clearly on her way to victory. This was the image she needed to focus on in order to give her courage to go forward, to survive anything, anything at all.

  Opening her eyes, she quickly removed the remainder of her clothes. Colonel Kimmel now volunteered victoriously, “Fräulein, that is excellent!” and, turning towards his dinner companions, he announced, “Gentlemen, it seems that we have within our midst the perfect sample for the purpose at hand. I for one find this specimen to be the finest and certainly the most compliant of any that we have observed here at Drancy.”

  Turning back toward her, he commanded, “Miss Felicité, I must insist that you hold your hands above your head and turn full circle so that the experimental results can be evaluated in their entirety.” At this, Felicité closed her eyes and implemented his instructions precisely.

  At length, the inspection having been completed, the commandant assessed, “Gentlemen, it appears that Fräulein Felicité is quite appealing, but only from the waist up. It is imminently clear that the Führer is quite correct. While she is indeed appealing, it is obvious that she is not suitable from the waist down. What a pity. In other circumstances she might have made a fitting vessel for proliferation of The Reich.” He halted momentarily and followed with, “Fräulein, it seems that you are not worthy of the Third Reich. Therefore, I must ask you to lie prone on your back and raise your feet in the air directly over your head.”

  Now terrified beyond description, Felicité followed his instructions, fearing that she could well be executed right here on this very table. The commandant came forward, but before she had time to realize what he was about, he pulled his riding crop from behind his back and struck her viciously on both feet. She lurched and cried out in pain, but he had by then enlisted two of his subordinates to hold her feet in place. “There, there, fräulein. I’m sure that this must be somewhat painful, but I assure you that it is necessary,” and he struck her again, and then again. Two more blows, and she was screaming uncontrollably in pain.

  The commandant stepped back from her and cooed with feigned empathy, “Now you will not even consider the thought of escape, will you, fräulein?” and without awaiting an answer from his now whimpering protégé, he turned to his aides and commanded viciously, “Klaus, Heinrich, get this baggage out of here!” at which two of the men dragged her from the table and carried her from the room.

  An hour later Felicité lay within a cell, still naked, but somehow thankful to simply be alive. Her feet bloodied and swollen from the commandant’s vicious beating, she lay there hoping for little more than that they would not come back for her any time soon. Her arms were also a bit bloody from the iron cuffs about her wrists, but her feet were by far the worst. Though she was by now resigned to the reality that she was going to die, she nevertheless clung desperately to her sanity in the hope that she might avoid divulging any secret information.

  As it turned out, having arrested her on the charge that her mother had been Jewish, the Gestapo apparently had no inkling whatsoever that she was a spy. Her Jewish blood had turned out to be a great shock to her and, although her father should have told her, she could understand how he had held it back from her. As she had not the energy to ponder the issue further, she drifted off into a fitful sleep.

  A short time later she was awakened by the sound of a guard entering her cell. Dragging her to her feet, he commanded, “Put this on,” at which she quickly put on the proffered tattered dress and sweater. He then led her from the cell, causing her to limp badly from the injuries to her feet.

  The guard now removed her iron cuffs, at which she asked timidly, “Where are you taking me?”

  “You are scheduled for transport to the East, fräulein.”