by Jeanne Gask
The lobby was in pandemonium. Weeping women were wrenched from their men and told roughly to go home.
A voice called out, ‘Marie! Marie!’
Marie gasped. ‘My goodness, it’s Paul, one of the boys from college. They’ve got him!’
Paul shouted, trying to make his voice heard above the commotion. ‘Marie, go and tell my mother I’ve been arrested. Can you hear me?’
She waved and tried to smile reassuringly. Poor Paul! She wondered what would happen to him. She turned to Nell and her sisters. ‘Come on, I know where he lives, it’s just round the corner. His poor mother! What a shock.’
They forced their way through the crowd gathered outside the cinema and were soon at Paul’s house. They knocked on the door. A first-floor window opened cautiously and a frightened voice said, ‘Who is it?’ People always feared a nocturnal knock on the door.
‘It’s me, Marie Sarginson. We’ve come from the cinema. Paul’s been picked up.’ They heard a gasp and the window closed. Within seconds, Madame Dupuis was on the doorstep in her dressing gown and they gave her as much information as they could.
When they had delivered their message, they walked on towards home, discussing the evening’s events. Surely Paul, being only seventeen and still at college, would be released? Paul was indeed freed, but immediately disappeared. His mother had decided he might not be so lucky next time. He was, it was said, ‘en foret’. Working in forestry was a euphemism in wartime France for ‘he’s in hiding’ or ‘he’s joined the Resistance’.
It was on the way home that Marie fell and twisted her ankle. She just could not walk on it. They stood around her in the pitch-dark blackout, the inadequate light of Nell’s torch shining feebly on Marie’s ankle, not quite knowing what to do next, when, incongruously, they heard someone walking down the street, cheerfully whistling Geraldo’s signature tune, straight off the forbidden BBC broadcasts: He-llo again. We’re on the radi-o again . . .
There was only one person in German-occupied Cambrai who had the audacity to do such a thing.
‘Jean! Jean . . .Come here, over here!’ they called.
That night, Jean got his heart’s desire. He scooped Marie up in his arms and, holding her close to him, carried her home.
Much, much later, after the liberation, a man stood on their doorstep resplendent in brand-new uniform. It was Jean, the youngest brigadier in the French army!
8. Internment Days
Tom was settling in to internment camp life.
The 1,300 British internees were from all over Europe. Some had even been caught at sea, including a boatload of missionaries. Tom used to say that in the camp, the Bible was translated into whatever language you cared to mention. Seventeen languages were spoken. The only language to beat the censors at the large centre in Breslau was Welsh. In consequence, letters in Welsh were banned.
The small group of internees from Calais had been able to stay together. They were in Room 309, on the third floor of the old lunatic asylum; sixty-six men crammed in a room meant for thirty inmates. They made the best of these difficult conditions, but it wasn’t easy.
Among them was P. G. Wodehouse, the humorist, picked up from his house in Le Touquet. He wrote at length about camp life in his book The Performing Flea, mentioning ‘that rare soul Tom Sarginson’ among others. Tom didn’t like him very much, though. The great man treated camp life as a ‘Jolly Jape’, and Tom thought it nothing like a jolly jape. Tom just wanted to be back home with his wife and family. He endured the situation and hoped it wouldn’t last too long.
Wodehouse described how, when a loaf of German Army issue bread was thrown onto the dinner table to be divided between nine internees, Tom took his steel rule out and measured accurately, making sure that the sloped end portions were a little deeper. Everyone watched Tom like a hawk and woe betide him should the knife have slipped!
Tom noticed early on that some men were not coping at all well with their imprisonment. In particular, a man he knew well had become a little grey-haired old man almost overnight, shuffling to and fro from his bunk looking lost. Tom resolved to keep fit in mind and body so that, whenever the war ended, he could take up his life where he had left off. He found that men who had been to boarding school or ex-servicemen like himself, coped best of all.
At various times he was a deputy Camp Captain, a Red Cross committee member, learned German, taught French, volunteered to help build a dam, took up painting and model making and passed five School Certificates (old GCSEs) including English. He wrote to Gramp and Rikkie, ‘Takes one war to learn English and another to improve it. One war to introduce me to ladies and another to keep me away!’
He would also walk round the perimeter of the camp four times every evening, the equivalent of one mile, to keep himself fit.
Life was much easier for the men once the all-important Red Cross parcels started to arrive. Gone were the days of smoking thrice-used tea leaves, and cleaning one’s teeth with the ash. Bartering became the order of the day. If one bartered wisely, one had no need to go without ever again. The non-smokers were particularly favoured. The parcels always contained a tin of fifty cigarettes, and a non-smoker could hold a smoker to ransom, swapping his unwanted cigarettes for all sorts of goodies. Parcels also began arriving from friends and relatives. They had to be five pounds in weight. If a parcel didn’t quite reach that weight, the Red Cross would add a pair of gloves or socks to make the weight up.
Nell’s sister Elsie, known as ‘Rikkie’, which she preferred, worked tirelessly to send whatever she could. She also wrote to the Red Cross in Birmingham and to whomever she could to see if Nell could also receive parcels but nothing ever came of it. She made such a nuisance of herself that she became Chairman of the local Prisoner of War Society, which amused her greatly.
Tom would occasionally send coded messages. For instance if he said he was pleased to hear that Rikkie’s firm was doing well, it was a way of saying that there was a radio concealed in the camp and that they could hear the BBC news. (Rikkie was personal assistant to the regional director of the BBC in Birmingham.) But when he mentioned Monsieur Salva, the Italian greengrocer back home, Nell said, ‘Why has he mentioned Monsieur Salva, I hardly knew the man!’
‘He’s talking about the Italians and their position in the war!’ Irene said. And they noticed that Tom wrote about Boris, the only Russian they knew in Calais, with the same general meaning.
Many of the men were musicians or performers who had been touring the Continent and had been caught at the outbreak of war. Through the Red Cross they were able to have costumes and musical instruments sent over, and Tom said that some of the shows he saw were every bit as good as anything he had seen on the professional stage.
Of course, with so many men cooped up for such a long time, all sorts of mischief occurred. The men had observed that their scraps of inedible food were fed to the camp pigs. But when they realised that the pigs were actually going to feed the guards and not the internees, the pigs died mysteriously. The men had chopped up used razor blades into tiny pieces and mixed them in with the scraps!
Tom was learning German and undertook his own propaganda campaign. Taking a newly arrived can of lamb’s tongues, he showed it to one of the guards and said, ‘Look, I’ve just received this tin, it holds six lamb’s tongues. There are 1,300 internees in the camp, and they have all received a similar can. 1,300 times six is 7,800. That means 7,800 lambs were slaughtered so that the internees in this camp could have a can of lamb’s tongues each! What chance have you of winning the war against such might?’
Tom was not alone in his sense of humour. When the Camp Commandant did his round, he was followed by a retinue of four corporals, guns slung over one shoulder. P.G. Wodehouse wrote in his memoir The Performing Flea that the men would say, ‘Here they come, “Ginger, Rosebud, Pluto and Donald Duck” and they would roar with laughter.’
After ten months, P.G. Wodehouse received an offer by the German authorities to go and sta
y in a Hotel in Berlin in perfect freedom and his wife Ethel, who was held in an internment camp for women in northern France, would be free to join him. He would broadcast amusing lectures about life in internment camp to his many friends in neutral America who had been pressing for his release. This he accepted, and although there was no harm at all in the lectures, it caused consternation back in Britain. Questions were asked in Parliament and he was branded a traitor. He was never able to return home and spent the rest of his life in the United States. He was forgiven and knighted on January 1st 1975 and died a few weeks later, aged 93. There is a plaque on the wall of Huy Citadel in Belgium stating that: The humorist P.G. Wodehouse was detained here from 3rd August 1940 to 8th September 1940.
9. A Bit Of a Fixer
Nell was examining a newly arrived photo of Tom among the party of volunteers working on the dam. My, he looked well: lean and fit. He had been putting on weight before the war; he’d been so fond of the good life: restaurant meals and good wine. Now he looked more like the old Tommy, the young man she had married: slim and handsome. She looked at the photo through the magnifying glass, trying to make out his innermost thoughts. It was such a thrill to get a photo at last. Things were looking up.
In the accompanying letter, Tom mentioned that he had obtained permission to send Nell a parcel containing English books, courtesy of the Red Cross. He hoped that she would enjoy them. The one with the green cover would be particularly to her taste.
Christmas was coming – Christmas 1942 – and Nell had nothing to celebrate with. No money, no extra food, no presents for the girls. Nothing.
The parcel duly arrived and Nell opened it, the girls chattering and buzzing around her excitedly. The arrival of any kind of parcel was a very rare occurrence. There they were, about thirty English books, mostly paperbacks in a row, foreign-looking, exuding a pre-war life, a life of plenty. They even smelled different. Nell’s hand went to the book with the green spine. She pulled it out . . . and out fell a large bar of chocolate, a pack of twenty English cigarettes and a packet of tea.
The girls gasped, and Nell burst into tears. What a treasure! What joy!
‘How did he manage it? Who did he have to bribe? Oh, that Tom . . . he was always a bit of a fixer!’ Nell smiled through her tears.
Jeanne wore mostly hand-me-downs. By the time Marie’s clothes had been passed on to Irene and then on to Jeanne, their as-new freshness was long gone. She longed for something that had been bought especially for her, for her alone. But she might as well have longed for the moon. She always came last.
Nell had written to Tom, voicing her anxiety about the coming winter and the need for a new coat for Jeanne who was outgrowing everything fast. Tom-the-fixer wrote back saying he had permission to send a Red Cross issue blanket, and that it was to be made into a coat for Jeanne. When the parcel arrived, Jeanne could scarcely contain herself, hopping up and down with excitement.
‘Open it, come on, quick, Mum, open it . . .’
There it was, mid-grey, in pure wool. ‘Such quality! Real pre-war!’
Nell examined it. ‘Yes . . . yes, that’ll do nicely, and there’s plenty of it too. Come on, there’s no time like the present. We’ll go down to the couturiere now.’
She put her hat and coat on, tucked the parcel under one arm, took hold of Jeanne’s hand and they walked down to the dressmaker’s at the end of the road.
They were let into the woman’s front room that doubled as a workshop. It was an untidy jumble of patterns, bits of material, dressmaker’s dummies, pattern books, a couple of sewing machines side-by-side on a long table, and more besides.
The couturiere spread the blanket out. ‘Yes, that should make a nice coat for the little girl. Now, sit down here, dear.’ She turned to Jeanne and cleared an armchair. ‘Look in this pattern book, and tell me if you see the coat you want.’
Jeanne for once in her young life felt very grown-up and important. She knew exactly what she wanted. The well-off French girls at school, those whose Daddies weren’t in prison camp and who could afford black market clothes, all had a coat with a hood and trousers to match. That’s what she wanted. She very quickly found it in the book and pointed. ‘That’s the one!’
The couturiere looked at the drawing in the pattern-book and considered. ‘Let me see, ye-es, ye-es . . . I think I’ve got enough for the coat and the hood. Now, what about the lining?’
A lining as well? My goodness, how exciting!
The woman showed Jeanne several samples of the shiny material, and they decided together on a tiny pink and mauve hound’s tooth. This was very ‘in’ in the winter of 1942. Nell didn’t mind paying the black market price for the lining material; they were getting a very cheap coat.
Jeanne was measured all over it seemed, then they were ready to leave.
‘All right, dear,’ the dressmaker said, waving goodbye from her door. ‘Come back in three days, and we’ll have a fitting.’
A FITTING! Jeanne was going to have a fitting, just like the beautiful ladies in the films. She hopped and skipped all the way home, bouncing on and off the pavement, singing,
‘A fitting, a fitting,
That’s what I’m havin’
A fitting, a fitting,
Isn’t it excitin.’
The coat and hood when finished were everything she had hoped for. Jeanne felt so proud as she walked through the town on her way to school. She felt quite sure everyone was looking at her admiringly. She never did get the trousers though. There just wasn’t enough material.
10. Radio Days
In the evenings, the girls would do their homework sitting at the large table under the only light, squabbling pettily in the claustrophobic confines of the only heated room. There was just the coal-burning, pot-bellied stove to huddle round. Coal wasn’t always available and so when the coal ration didn’t materialise, Nell bought bags of chopped wood and fed it into the stove at regular intervals throughout the evening.
‘Your turn for an all-over wash tonight, Jeanne.’ Nell had brought a bucket of cold water from the kitchen and placed it on the stoked-up stove. The water warmed while they were doing their homework.
It took hours to warm up. They never experienced the luxury of a proper hot wash, it would have taken forever to get really hot. No, an all-over wash at 8, rue de Monstrelet was not something to be enjoyed, but endured. The connecting doors into the bedroom were left ajar during this time, warming the room.
After simply ages, Nell felt the water. ‘All right, Jeannot, it’s warm enough now.’
Jeanne took the bucket of lukewarm water into the bedroom, closed the door and poured some of the water into the bowl on the washstand. She stripped to the waist, washed, dried and dressed that bit. Then she undressed from the waist down, washed, dried and dressed quickly. By now, the water was freezing cold.
When she had finished, she poured the dirty water into the slop-bucket, carried it through the sitting-room, making sure she didn’t spill the water as she negotiated her way round the large table, went down the long hall, through to the yard and tipped the water down the lavatory.
Nell then cleared the table and brought the food down the bitterly cold hall from the kitchen. Mashed potatoes and boiled swedes again? War is a monotonous thing for civilians. After, they would stave off the hunger pangs with bread and jam, ration jam, that is. Nell swore it was turnip or swede jam, with a little fruit added to disguise the taste. Bread and jam without butter wasn’t nice. The jam sank into the bread and it became a soggy mess.
It was at mealtimes that they played their favourite game.
‘D’you remember, when we visited Uncle Tom in England,’ Irene would start. ‘Margaret his housekeeper cooked eggs and bacon for breakfast every morning. You could have two eggs if you wanted.’
Jeanne was incredulous. ‘What, two eggs, each?’ She just couldn’t believe it.
‘There were two sorts of cereal to choose from,’ Irene went on. ‘I remember, corn flakes and Rice
Krispies —’
‘Yes!’ Marie interrupted. ‘And there was a big jug full of milk on the table, and a bowl of sugar, and we laughed when the Rice Krispies crackled when we poured milk on them. Then we’d have hot buttered toast with a choice of real jam, with lumps of fruit in it, or marmalade.’
‘What’s marmalade?’ Jeanne’s memory didn’t stretch that far back.
‘It’s a sort of orange jam the English have for breakfast. It’s a bit bitter, not everyone likes it.’ Jeanne could just about remember the taste of oranges.
Then the photo albums would come out of the sideboard, the precious photo albums Nell had sent for from Calais, together with Marie’s bike. They drooled over the pre-war Christmas photos, with Tom grinning proudly while standing over a massive turkey with the carving knife and fork at the ready.
‘My!’ Nell reminisced, ‘that was the biggest turkey you ever saw. It must have been at least fifteen pounds in weight!’ Each time Nell mentioned that bird its weight had increased. That’s what hunger does for you.
These games cheered them up. They reminded them of the other world, the world of plenty; that some day the war would be over and they would be able to eat proper food once more.
At nine o’clock every evening they heard the forbidden BBC news from London, given in French by the Free French. These broadcasts gave them the truth. They were an enormous morale booster.
Nell used to scream with rage at the radio if ever Lord Haw-Haw’s sneering, mocking voice came on. He was William Joyce, the Irish traitor, broadcasting from Berlin, gloating over Allied defeats and German victories. It was all she could do not to take her shoe off and throw it at the radio.
