by Jeanne Gask
Tom and Nell would rent a seaside cottage at Sandgatte, outside Calais, and the whole household, including Clothilde the maid, would spend the summer months there. Tom commuted to work every day in his beloved Maigret-style Citroën.
The cottage backed onto the beach. It was paradise for three young girls. Jeanne had a shrimping net and spent hours in the shallows with Dick the dog catching shrimps, an assortment of shells and the occasional crab. She learned early to keep away from jellyfish that abounded on the beach but admired their wonderful colours from afar.
Gramp, Granny and Nell’s sister Elsie, known as Rikkie, came over from England. There were long family days and beach picnics.
Yes, life was good to Tom, Nell and the girls, but all that was to change on September 3rd, 1939.
The First World War, called ‘the war to end all wars’, had left the whole of Europe in turmoil, not least vanquished Germany. When Hitler became German Chancellor in the early 1930s, he was thought by many to be the saviour of the German nation. He began regenerating the depressed German economy and building motorways, cars and planes, giving hope to the conquered people.
But almost from the start, he was looking beyond the German frontiers. He annexed Austria, Bohemia and Moravia and, to a mixed reception, his troops entered Prague, the Czechoslovak capital, in March 1939.
He next laid claim to Danzig (Gdansk) in Poland. Britain and France had pledged to defend Poland. On 22nd August 1939, Hitler announced the destruction of Poland ‘starting on Saturday morning’. German troops entered Poland the next day. Britain and France gave Germany an ultimatum to withdraw from Poland by 11.00 am on 3rd September, or war would be declared on Germany. At 11.15 am on that day Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, made his famous broadcast, saying that, ‘No such undertaking has been received, and consequently this country is at war with Germany.’
At first, life went on much as before. This is the period known as the ‘phoney war’. Tom carried on working, and the girls returned to the college Sophie Berthelot at the end of the summer holidays.
Then, almost imperceptibly, things started to change.
‘Look, Jeannot,’ Nell said one evening, ‘I’ve decided to take you away from the college. You’ll have to go to the local school.’
Jeanne was offended. ‘But it’s full of children I’m not allowed to play with. Those awful Durie children go there. Pooh . . . they smell . . . I don’t want to go there . . . Don’t let me go there . . . I don’t want to go . . . Why can’t I carry on going to the college? Why Mummy, why?’
‘I’m sorry Jeannot, there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t get hold of enough petrol to drive you girls to college any more. Marie and Irene can walk there, but you’re too young. It’s too far. You’ll have to go to the village school.’
And that was that.
Then an anti-aircraft battery appeared in the field at the back of the house. It became a meeting place for all the children of the neighbourhood. They spent their time bothering the gun crew and being chased off. Jeanne was learning a few choice words she had never heard before and behaviour that would not have been acceptable previously. Her real education had begun in earnest.
As Spring came, events began hotting up. The grown-ups were getting more and more boring, shushing Jeanne whenever the radio news came on. There was talk of the Maginot Line, the British Expeditionary Forces pouring into France, someone called Mr Chamberlain forever attending meetings. None of it made sense to her.
Tom and Nell were constantly in a huddle, holding long, whispered conversations and telling Jeanne to ‘go and play’.
Still . . . Jeanne had something else to think about; something far more exciting. Her birthday was near. She would be eight on May 10th. Imagine . . . eight – why, that was almost grown up! She knew exactly what she wanted for her birthday. Dolls were not for her; dolls were cissy, stupid things. No, she asked for something much better: tin soldiers, and preferably British ones. A week before the great day, Nell took her to town to choose her present. And there they all were in the shop window, exactly as she had pictured them: a squad of nine British soldiers, in full battle khaki with tin hats on, marching proudly into battle in three rows of three. In front, the flag bearer held the Union Jack aloft, and behind, oh joy of joys, a gun that fired real caps. She was hopping up and down, first on one foot, then the other but, once Nell had bought them, she put the soldiers away.
‘You’ll get them on your birthday,’ she promised.
One evening just before her birthday, Jeanne heard a commotion downstairs. Looking through the banister railings, she saw a man gesticulating and shouting excitedly.
‘Monsieur Tom, Monsieur Tom, all the English are leaving. Go, you must go, the last boat is leaving for Dover tonight!’
‘No,’ Tom said, adamant. ‘My place is here with my work. I’m not going.’ He called to Nell as he closed the door. ‘They’re fools, they’re all panicking. It’ll all be over in no time. It’ll be over by Christmas. You’ll see.’
1940–1941
3. The Balloon Goes Up
‘Not even my soldiers?’ Jeanne was incredulous.
‘No, there’s no room in the car. We’re just taking bare essentials.’ Realising the unfairness of it all to a just-eight year old, Nell gave her a hug. ‘I’m sorry, Jeannot, we’ll make it up to you later, see if we won’t.’
On the morning of May 10th, all hell had let loose, the birthday completely forgotten, overtaken by momentous events. During the night, German troops had invaded and overrun Holland then neutral Belgium. The war had started in earnest. Hordes of refugees poured over the border into France, carrying what possessions they could in cars, lorries, horse-drawn carts, handcarts, bikes, on foot; all fleeing in front of the enemy in a chaotic rabble.
Tom held a family conference. ‘We’ll go camping. We’ll go south. You girls remember how much you enjoyed it down in Provence. You’ll see. It’ll be fun. And it won’t last long, it’ll just be a long holiday, longer than usual.’
Clothilde the maid was sent home to her parents in floods of tears. Dick the dog, Zezette the cat and the chicks were taken to friends in the country. ‘It won’t be for long. We’ll pick them up on our return.’
Tom strapped two double mattresses, one on top of the other, to the car roof for the gruesome purpose of protecting them from machine-gun bullets. He tied the old canvas tent to the rear bumper, put clothes and food in the boot. Once the three girls were on the back seat, he locked up the house and they set off.
They suffered a horrendous journey.
Almost immediately, their progress was slowed down. They had become part of the great exodus of refugees, all fleeing south, away from the approaching German troops. Jeanne knew what refugees were as she had seen some in a camp on the beach outside Calais just two years before. Nell had told her that they were Spanish refugees from the Civil War and Jeanne had felt sorry for the barefoot children.
They reached Abbeville during the night to find the town in flames and their way blocked. They had only driven seventy-five miles and it was impossible to cross the river Somme. Nell looked at the map with a torch.
‘We can cross at St Valery, further up. There’s a bridge there. Go back to sleep, Jeanne, there’s a good girl.’
Dawn found all the refugees being diverted off the road into a field.
‘It’s to make way for a column of French tanks. They’re expected . . .’
‘That’ll show ’em!’ People were smiling, cheered up. ‘Let’s chase the Boches back over the Maginot Line and then we can all go home,’ they said.
Towards lunchtime the refugees were back on the road. There were no tanks.
Tom was still trying to make his way to St Valery so that they might cross the river there. They met a British Army ambulance full of wounded going in the opposite direction. They stopped and exchanged information with the driver and the nurses. It became obvious they were going round in circles.
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��Come on,’ Tom said, grimly. ‘We’ll still try for the bridge.’
But just a few hundred yards on, a French soldier with a rifle in his hand waved them down urgently. ‘Get out! Get down into the ditch, quick . . . quick . . .!’
They tumbled out of the car, ran into a small wood, and lay down as they had been told, joining other refugees there. A machine-gun rat-tat-tat-ted fifty yards away.
The soldier shouted to Nell, ‘Don’t worry about your fur-coat, Madame! Get right down . . . flat!’
After some time, the panic was averted and they were allowed to carry on, but where to?
Tom turned to Nell and the girls. ‘Look, I’m sorry. We’re trapped. We’re exhausted. Let’s find some shelter for the night. When the French troops have kicked the Germans out of the area, we’ll drive on.’
They knocked on the door of the nearest farmhouse, begging shelter for the night. The farmyard was overflowing with refugees.
The farmer was sceptical. ‘Well . . . I don’t know. We’re packed out.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully. His farmyard was full to bursting: French, Belgians and Dutch refugees living in his yard, sleeping in his barn. But he took pity on the tired family.
‘Oh, all right then, but you’re the last. You can sleep over there, with the others.’
Jeanne woke the next morning to find a hen scratching for food in the straw right by her head. She had never been on a farm before and she was thrilled. She prodded her sisters awake. They picked the bits of straw out of each other’s clothes and hair and looked for their parents.
Tom and Nell were already talking to the farmer, poking about and wandering in and out of stables and outhouses. What on earth were they doing?
Tom came over to the girls.
‘The farmer’s let us have an empty cowshed. When Mum and I have cleaned it out, we can sleep in it.’
Jeanne was sorry they wouldn’t be sleeping in the barn again; she’d liked that.
The girls set off to explore their new surroundings. The farmyard was full of people trying to get over their ordeal, washing themselves, washing clothes and feeding children. A flurry of domesticity, all in the open air. A gang of five lads from Lille, speaking their northern dialect, had killed a hare, skinned it and were cooking it in a pot on a makeshift fire set up in the middle of the yard. The children were hanging around, attracted by the aroma, hoping for a mouthful to come their way.
The girls made everyone’s acquaintance, found children of their own age who took them to see the farm animals. Jeanne was in heaven; she did so love animals.
The sisters and their newfound friends kept popping back to the cowshed to check on Tom and Nell’s progress.
Finally, in the early evening, Tom said, ‘All right, the floor’s dry now. You girls can help me get the mattresses in.’
He un-strapped them from the car roof and they carried them in one at a time to lay them ceremoniously side by side on the stone floor. Nell followed in with the tiny camping stove to make a kitchen of sorts.
The girls bounced up and down on the mattresses, giggling delightedly. They lay down and found their new home to their liking. Marie pointed out a swallow’s nest high up in the eaves, and they watched as the parent birds flew in and out, feeding their noisy family.
Tom followed them in.
‘Well,’ he said, looking round him, ‘it isn’t exactly the Ritz, but it’s an improvement on the barn!’
The next day the refugees staying on the farm, all twenty-four of them, stood in a row on the side of the road as the German troops rolled in. The gang of lads from Lille started to run away, but Tom shouted out, ‘Don’t run, they’ll shoot you.’ The boys stood still.
They were now ‘occupied’.
A young German army officer stood in the middle of the field, flanked by two of his soldiers, surveying the assembled crowd. His orders were simple: try and calm the situation down. Be friendly. Try and put them at their ease. The people really did look frightened, backing away to the edges of the field as far away from him as possible.
He saw his soldiers mingling among them, offering sweets to the children. Many parents made them throw them away. There had been rumours about poisoned sweets. One soldier was comically unwrapping a sweet and putting it in his mouth, saying, ‘Nein, nein . . . gut, gut!’
The officer noticed a family standing a little apart. They looked different from the others: three blonde-headed little girls that could have been German; mother smart, fur-coated, and the father, defiant but scared, holding the hand of the youngest girl, who was peeping fearfully from behind him.
Jeanne, holding her Daddy’s hand, was frightened. The big soldiers all had club-shaped grenades tucked into the top of their jackboots. Daddy had explained to her that you only had to pull the pin out of the grenade and you had ten seconds before it exploded. She eyed the grenades apprehensively.
The young officer shouted out, ‘We have assembled you to count you. Report to the Mairie (Town Hall) daily. We will tell refugees when to go home. I want the French on the left of the field, and the Belgians and Dutch on the right.’ The crowd parted, leaving Tom and his family isolated.
‘Yes?’ said the officer brusquely.
‘I’m British.’ Heart in mouth, Tom expected to be led to the nearest tree and shot.
‘My goodness,’ the officer said in perfect English. ‘What are you doing here?’ He thought for a moment. He didn’t quite know what to do with them; his orders hadn’t included stray English families. ‘Oh well, you’d better go with the French.’
At this time, one of the most momentous episodes of the war was being enacted at Dunkirk, twenty-five miles north of Calais. The allied army was ordered to retreat to Dunkirk beach, where every available pleasure steamer, fishing boat, boats of all shapes and sizes, was coming over from Britain to rescue the beleaguered troops. They were being constantly shelled by the Germans. It was a highly hazardous operation. In all, 861 boats rescued 224,585 British and 112,546 French and Belgian servicemen and took them back to safety in England.
Of course Tom and Nell knew nothing of this and life for them was difficult enough. Tom reported to the Mairie every day and had to nearly fight for their ration of rock-hard, month-old bread. Food was in short supply.
After three weeks, empty houses and holiday villas were allocated to the refugees to stay in until it was safe to go home.
Tom and his family found themselves in a holiday villa in a nearby seaside town.
It was here that Jeanne was beaten up by a gang of local children, angry at her presence and defending their territorial rights. Eight or ten of them set on her, kicking and punching her with cries of, ‘Go home, dirty refugee!’ She ran home crying her eyes out and fell, sobbing, in Nell’s lap.
‘They won’t play with me . . .’ Jeanne was having to learn some very hard lessons.
On June 25th the French surrendered and a cease-fire began. Tom and his family were ordered home. They viewed the journey with dread, but apart from seeing a couple of dead bodies at the roadside, they got home safely.
Tom, Nell and the girls stood outside their house. They had been met by Madame Durie and Nell could see she was flustered, a red spot growing upon each cheek.
‘But . . . We thought you’d gone back to England?’ She kept them talking in the road. Tales of looters coming in droves across the fields, taking chairs, tables, whole three-piece suites, anything they could carry.
When they finally let themselves into the house, they found they too had been looted, the house was in turmoil. Tom and Nell stepped over the rubbish, what was left of their possessions, their home they had been so proud of, and tried to make out exactly what had been left by the looters. Casting an experienced housewife’s eye over the rooms, Nell said, ‘Someone’s been in here quite recently, the dust is disturbed . . . Look, my silver tray’s still moving!’ And indeed it was. Nell’s silver tray, a wedding present from her boss back in Birmingham, propped up on the mantelpiece behind the clock, wa
s moving to and fro almost imperceptibly. Somebody had just left the house by the back door as the family entered by the front one. When Nell recounted this story in later years, she always swore that ‘Pa’ Durie had been busy replacing the objects he had stolen, while his wife kept Tom and Nell talking at the front. No wonder the woman had been so flustered.
Jeanne shouted, ‘My soldiers! What about my soldiers?’ She dashed up the stairs two at a time, into her bedroom and dived under the bed. Feeling along the struts under the springs, she found what she was looking for: her precious box of soldiers. Well, at least the looters had left them alone!
They tried to return to some kind of normality. Tom spent long hours at work, trying to formulate a working plan and the girls returned to school.
For once Jeanne was being good, not chattering or giggling but sitting at her school desk copying difficult words off the blackboard onto her slate while trying not to make the chalk squeak. She had been back at the village school a few days.
The headmistress burst into the room and whispered urgently to the teacher. The teacher pointed to the tallest girl in the class and said, ‘You come here!’ She whispered a few urgent instructions to the girl. Then, ‘Jeanne Sarginson, come here!’
What have I done now? Jeanne thought, as she walked towards the teacher.
The teacher said to Jeanne, ‘Go, run . . . run as fast as you can . . . run, little one, run . . .!’
