A Guest of the Reich

by Peter Finn

  There had been many more expeditions and foreign trips in the decades after Sidney’s death—Nepal, Equatorial Guinea, the Galápagos, the Amazon, and New Guinea, among others. Her last major fieldwork was in 1972, a study of the decline of the pygmy gibbon on the Indonesian island of Siberut in the Indian Ocean. “I consider I was fortunate to have been born in 1902,” Gertie said, “to have seen it all in B.T. (Before Tourists).”

  There was also a second, calamitous marriage in the 1950s that ended in divorce after five years.

  Through it all, she remained the matriarch of Medway. One of the doyennes of postwar Charleston, Gertie hosted a famous annual New Year’s Eve costume party at the plantation. She was also a committed conservationist who “gave up all development rights for herself and for successive owners” through the donation of perpetual easements at Medway to the Historic Charleston Foundation and to Ducks Unlimited.

  “I want Medway to be a place where the beasts can grow old and die,” she said. The plantation was sold by her daughter in 2012.

  Gertie, finally, became a terrific, beloved grandmother in contrast to her fraught relationships with her two daughters. “She adored her grandchildren,” her grandson Sandy said.

  In her heart, to the end, there was always only one man—Sidney. Her ashes—held in a silver horse-racing trophy—were poured around the grounds as well as into a grave alongside Sidney’s by the lake at Medway. This time it was Sam the butler who fired the shotgun over the grave. A choir sang “I Got Plenty of Nothing” from the Broadway musical Porgy and Bess as the funeral ended. Gertie’s daughter Bokara said she chose the song as “a sort of joke.” Gertie’s elder daughter, Landine, declined to attend the funeral, old wounds still open.

  * * *

  —

  Sidney’s portrait by the English artist Simon Elwes continued to hang in the dining room at Medway long after his death.

  “Every evening, I sit at one end of the dining room table facing his portrait,” Gertie recalled later in life. “He stands there in his shooting jacket with a gun over his shoulder, looking cool and detached at the portrait behind me—that of a young, confident woman looking less like me than I remember. Sidney is exactly as he was. I have no memory of his aging. In my mind, I shall always be married to a young and vital man who sees only the youth in me.”

  Acknowledgments

  The generosity of many people helped bring this book to life. I would like first to thank Harlan Greene and the staff of Special Collections, College of Charleston Libraries, and the South Carolina Historical Society, who warmly welcomed me and went above and beyond to help me navigate the papers of Gertie and her family. Just as gracious were Pierre Manigault and Sandy Wood, Gertie’s grandchildren, and Sandy’s wife, Sally, all of whom encouraged this work and shared their recollections of Gertie. Thanks also to Gertie’s secretary, Doris Walters, for her memories.

  Archivists are the great allies of writers, and I want to acknowledge the assistance of Abby Houston and Nicole Westerdahl at the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries; Annegret Wilke at the German Foreign Office archives; Kurt Erdmann at the Bundesarchiv, Abteilung Militärarchiv in Freiburg; Tobias Herrmann at the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz; Heinz Fehlauer at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin; Guido Koller at the Swiss Federal Archives; and Pamela Anderson at the National Archives in Kansas City, Missouri.

  Susan Strange is a master of the OSS papers at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and she found all that that priceless repository of history had to offer on Gertie. I also thank her for introducing me to Douglas Waller, Wild Bill Donovan’s biographer, who was kind enough to provide some pointers as I set out to tell this story and read the manuscript in draft. Joe D. Dickson, John Beattie, and Bruce Beattie provided photos of their uncles. Stephanie Phelan gave me permission to use her uncle’s poem about food. And Sebastian Pantel at the Südkurier in Constance helped me secure a photo of the border crossing.

  I am fortunate to have a wonderful group of friends and colleagues who read early drafts, helped with translations, assisted with my research, or just listened to me as I figured stuff out. Thank you to Souad Mekhennet, Patrick Farrelly, Kate O’Callaghan, Ulf and Ingrid Roeller, Boris and Majda Ruge, Steffen Burkhardt, Joby and Maryanne Warrick, Greg Miller, Julie Tate, Steven Rich, Scott Higham, Dan Lamothe, Ian Shapiro, and Jeff Wilklow. Another tip of the hat to Jeremy Crean and Ronan Farrell and Greg and Bill Finn. And thanks to Marc Bryan-Brown for the author photograph.

  For more than twenty years, I have worked at The Washington Post, where I was given more opportunities than I ever imagined possible. I’m grateful for the paper’s leadership: Jeff Bezos, Fred Ryan, Marty Baron, Cameron Barr, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, and Tracy Grant as well as the national security team and the editors I work most closely with, Steven Ginsberg, Lori Montgomery, Douglas Jehl, Matea Gold, Tiffany Harness, and Andy deGrandpre.

  Petra Couvée, my co-author on The Zhivago Affair, is a constant source of support and first helped me realize that book writing was possible. My agent, Raphael Sagalyn, is an indefatigable and formidable cornerman. Kristine Puopolo is a dream editor—deft, insightful, and always encouraging. Thanks also to Daniel Meyer at Doubleday and Brandon Coward at ICM/Sagalyn, who make all the logistics seem easy.

  My four children, Rachel, Liam, David, and Ria, are a joy and inspiration as they discover and pursue their own passions. My wife, Nora FitzGerald, is the love of my life, my partner in everything, and always my first reader and best critic.

  A Note on Sources

  Gertrude Legendre wrote a memoir of her wartime service and time as a POW that was published in 1947 as The Sands Ceased to Run. It was a valuable roadmap for me. Some of the dialogue in the memoir was reconstructed by Gertie after the fact, though she did have her diary to prompt her memory and she began writing very soon after her release. There are a number of early drafts of the “Sands” memoir, which sometimes include slightly different details about her experience. When I have used these drafts, I have noted so in the endnotes. I also note there some of the small contradictions between her OSS debriefing and her memoir.

  Gertie published a second memoir, The Time of My Life, in 1987, and it describes her life from her childhood into the 1950s. She was also an inveterate journal keeper on her trips, an avid letter writer, and an enthusiastic photographer. Her voluminous papers, a trove of rich detail, are held at the College of Charleston’s Special Collections, and much of that material is available online at the Lowcountry Digital Library. The Legendre Papers at the College of Charleston also includes the letters and writings of other members of her family, including those of her husband, Sidney. I have corrected minor typos in the letters between Gertie and Sidney.

  In addition, there are a significant number of documents on Gertrude Legendre in the files of the Office of Strategic Services at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, including the debriefing by Allen Dulles in Bern shortly after her escape. Gertie also was interviewed for a CIA oral history of the OSS, which is available at the National Archives.

  The U.S. military arrested and interrogated two Gestapo interpreters—Werner Müller and Ursula Zieschang—who were present at the questioning of Gertie in Berlin, and the May 1945 OSS reports on their interrogations provide some German perspective on her detention. Zieschang also typed some of the Gestapo reports on Gertie. In addition, she told her American interrogators that she had read Gertie’s entire Gestapo file in January 1945. She also kept her shorthand book of all correspondence dictated by the Gestapo officer in charge of Gertie’s case and reread it shortly before her arrest. Unfortunately, she destroyed the document as being compromising. But her American interrogators noted that her memory of the Legendre case was fresh and detailed.

  I obtained a limited number of files on Gertie from the Political Archive of the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin, which include notes on conversations
between the ministry, the Gestapo, and the Wehrmacht on the handling of her case.

  Wilhelm Gosewisch’s military book, a record of his service, is held at the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg, Germany, and the Bundesarchiv in Berlin holds the IG Farben personnel file of H. H. Grieme.

  The OSS files at the National Archives contain documents on the three men captured with Gertie: Major Maxwell Jerome Papurt, Lieutenant Commander Robert Jennings, and Private Doyle Dickson. I also obtained the military records of Jennings, Dickson, and Sidney Legendre from the National Archives in Saint Louis. Papurt’s file was not available, having been among the records that were destroyed in the 1973 fire that gutted a significant part of the holdings. Some of Papurt’s military records are included, however, in his OSS file.

  I was able to read Papurt’s wartime letters to the photographer Margaret Bourke-White, which are held in the Margaret Bourke-White Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

  The National Archives in Kansas City contains the immigration files of Wilhelm (later William) Gosewisch and his wife, Henrietta, later Rita.

  The wartime diary of the United Press correspondent Edward W. Beattie Jr., published in 1946 as Diary of a Kriegie, was invaluable because he was held at the same time and in some of the same places as Gertie.

  Notes

  ABBREVIATIONS

  GL: Gertrude Legendre

  LP: Legendre Papers, College of Charleston

  MBW: Margaret Bourke-White

  MJP: Maxwell Jerome Papurt

  NA: National Archives, College Park, Maryland

  PAAA: Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (Political Archive, Foreign Ministry)

  RG226: Record Group 226 is the group number for OSS files at the National Archives

  SL: Sidney Legendre

  CHAPTER 1

  the rue Cambon side of the Hôtel Ritz: GL, Sands Ceased to Run, 25. All quotations and scene details of Gertie’s wartime experience, unless otherwise noted, are from this memoir.

  Göring had taken over the imperial suite: Mazzeo, Hotel on Place Vendôme, 18.

  inventor of such cocktails as the bee’s knees: See Meier, Artistry of Mixing Drinks.

  but surreptitiously helped the Resistance: See Mazzeo, Hotel on Place Vendôme.

  “especially potent. It went straight to my head”: GL, Time of My Life, 58.

  “couldn’t wait to fit my uniform properly”: GL to SL, Sept. 21, 1944, LP.

  “Do you ever cry because you miss me?”: GL to SL, June 13, 1943, LP.

  Gertie cut off the twirl of hair: Autobiographical sketch, box 147, folder 7, LP.

  “When Gertrude felt strongly about”: SL, Land of the White Parasol, 3.

  “I have to leave my personality”: Bokara Legendre, Not What I Expected, 209.

  “I look ahead. I always have”: GL, Time of My Life, xiv.

  “Life has moved to Normandy”: GL to SL, June 29 and August 10, 1944, LP.

  “Everyone thrust drinks at us”: David K. E. Bruce, OSS Against the Reich, 171–74.

  Claude Auzello, the “elegantly unruffled” manager: Mazzeo, Hotel on Place Vendôme, 141.

  Perrier-Jouët champagne: Atkinson, Guns at Last Light, 179.

  “Her obsession was to see the battle”: Anne Perin to SL, Nov. 12, 1944, OSS scrapbook, LP.

  “summers in Biarritz, St. Jean de Luz”: GL, Time of My Life, 21.

  “I am getting used to cold baths”: GL to SL, Sept. 21, 1944, LP.

  “I looked around to see”: GL, “Sands Ceased to Run,” early draft, LP.

  Gertie knew Patton from London: OSS Oral History, interview with GL, 17, RG263-e84, NA.

  “It is always fun to meet the guys”: GL to SL, Feb. 18, 1944, LP.

  “bypass and encircle it, then await”: Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, 590.

  “accumulated a comfortable fortune”: Robert Jennings, Military Record, National Archives, St. Louis.

  He was scheduled to leave for London: Ibid.

  three correspondents had recently been captured: Beattie, Diary of a Kriegie, 97.

  “The impossible has happened”: SL to GL, Sept. 5, 1944, LP.

  “Watching their lives”: Bokara Legendre, Not What I Expected, 33.

  “Just received this minute”: GL to SL, Sept. 23, 1944, OSS scrapbook, LP.

  CHAPTER 2

  “We rode along straight roads”: GL, “Sands Ceased to Run,” early draft, RG226-e190-f771.

  Papurt spoke German: MJP to Lieutenant Colonel Hinman, May 30, 1942, MJP personnel file, RG226-e224-box 584.

  “If they gotta, I gotta”: MJP to MBW, n.d., MBW Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

  “He was a dead shot with a pistol”: MBW, Purple Heart Valley, 95.

  “One soon forgot his ugly face”: MBW, Portrait of Myself, 309.

  his wife in Columbus, Ohio: Sorel, Women Who Wrote the War, 241.

  probe the Westwall and be ready: The Wallendorf bridgehead is described in Charles MacDonald’s Siegfried Line Campaign, 56–65, from which all quotations on the CCR incursion are drawn.

  Papurt informed his commanding officer: Sept. 29, 1944, Twelfth Army Group Memos, RG226-e190-f772.

  Papurt, Jennings, and Gertie took off: GL, POW diary, Sept. 27, 1944, entry, transcript, RG226-e190-f772. (The diary is also held at the College of Charleston.)

  experiencing a frisson of unease: GL, “Sands Ceased to Run,” draft, box 135, folder 7, LP.

  “The hell you have”: GL, “Sands Ceased to Run,” early draft, 2, LP.

  “Isn’t that a laugh”: GL to SL, July 23, 1943. LP.

  “The Germans continued to give us”: Jennings Report on Time as POW, April 4, 1945, RG-226-e99-box14-f5.

  Gertie pulled a blanket: GL, POW diary, Sept. 27, 1944, transcript, RG226-e190-f772.

  but now her training flooded back: GL to SL, July 23, 1943, LP.

  An eternity seemed to pass: Jennings Report on Time as POW.

  CHAPTER 3

  “But it was my elk”: GL, Time of My Life, 25.

  “was a real ‘let’s get cracking’ ”: Bokara Legendre, “Mummy Was a Wild Game Hunter,” The Moth Radio Hour, Nov. 2, 2001.

  “In my view, it is most important”: Cochran, “Mr. Lincoln’s Many-Faceted Minister and Entrepreneur Extraordinary Henry Shelton Sanford,” 74.

  they communicated through notes: Bokara Legendre, Not What I Expected, 34.

  “less companionship” as they got older: GL, Time of My Life, 13.

  estate estimated at $40 million: Robb, Sanfords of Amsterdam, 80.

  “Horses, my mares, my stable”: Ibid., 22.

  “My memories of those early days”: GL, Time of My Life, 4.

  “giant French windows with garlands”: New York Times, Jan. 7, 2001, RE7.

  the butler placed theater tickets: Bokara Legendre, Not What I Expected, 33.

  on the back of a baby elephant: Beach, Medway, 49.

  “the treasures were piled high”: GL, Essay, Egypt and the Nile, 1924, box 129, folder 11, LP.

  At the port of Mogadishu: All descriptions of the 1927–28 Africa expedition are from Gertie’s journal unless otherwise stated. Diary of African Hunting Trip, 1927–1928, box 129, folder 3, LP.

  “they are called savages”: Brooklyn Eagle, Aug. 21, 1929.

  “swarthy, dark-skinned, bandit-looking faces”: Persia diary, box 134, folder 5, LP.

  CHAPTER 4

  “no one thought there could be an end to it”: GL, Time of My Life, 32.

  “staged, like a still from some adventure film”: Ibid., 39.

  Visiting Oxford, she met two young Americans: SL to GL, June 22, 1943
, LP.

  “masters in the art of living”: Tomkins, Living Well Is the Best Revenge, 14.

  “As far as company is concerned”: GL, Time of My Life, 53.

  “There was some question”: Bokara Legendre, “Mummy Was a Wild Game Hunter.”

  The existence of the animal: Quinn, Windows on Nature, 49.

  “to bring a vision of the world”: Ibid., 12.

  “the gyroscope that kept our tempers”: GL, Time of My Life, 79.

  silver mule from the royal stable: Ibid., 58.

  It was a hard expedition: All descriptions of the 1928–29 Africa expedition are from Gertie’s journal unless otherwise stated. GL, Diary of My African Hunting Trip, 1927–1928, box 182, folder 9, LP.

  “I am looking forward to seeing the specimens”: H. E. Anthony to GL, April 25, 1929, Abyssinia Photograph Album, 1929, LP.

  Morris was the bigger personality: GL to SL, Feb. 17, 1943, LP.

  “and the thoughtful quality he had”: GL, Time of My Life, 64.

  hints in a letter: SL to GL, June 22, 1943, LP.

  “I must confess that I was rather proud”: GL, Time of My Life, 67.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Father had very little money in stocks”: Beach, Medway, 27.

  “the thrashing of those damn palm trees”: Bokara Legendre, Not What I Expected, 36.

  a total of 7,110 acres: Beach, Medway, 43.

  “Virginia has so much to offer”: Plantation Diary, 237, LP.

  “She loved to entertain”: Sandy Wood (Gertie’s grandson), interview with author, Feb. 18, 2017, Upperville, Va.

  “Luncheon was laid under the pines”: Beach, Medway, 93–94.

  on Gertie’s zebra skins: Ibid., 60.