Nell and the Girls

by Jeanne Gask

  Charlotte, Marie and Irene ran down the stairs into the street. Yves, Claude and Jeanne ran to the windows and hung out of them, egging the girls on by shouting instructions to them. ‘Over there, look! There’re three Americans, they’ll do!’

  They watched the girls run up to them and, with much laughing and giggling, took them by the hand and dragged them towards the shop saying, ‘Come on, come on . . . we’re having a party . . . don’t say no . . . come on . . . this way . . .!’ It took a little while for the soldiers to understand just what was going on, but eventually they good-humouredly allowed themselves to be led by the hand through the shop, up the stairs and into the large kitchen, where a woman was making pancakes, which were being eaten as fast as she could make them. Three younger children were running about excitedly. It was impossible to tell who was related to whom, they all looked the same, like peas in a pod. At the table sat an Englishwoman, drinking coffee and smoking.

  The soldiers introduced themselves: a US army doctor and two orderlies. They sat down, accepted coffee and pancakes and chatted. Roger and Jean joined in too.

  But the young people didn’t want a lot of boring chat; they wanted a party. They took turns at the mic in the sitting room, singing all the hits of the day: Lily Marlene – in French of course – and C’est la barque du reve (when my dreamboat comes home), as well as Music Maestro, please. These were all English language songs that had inexplicably crossed over to occupied France and were claimed as French.

  Then the younger children wanted to do party tricks. Jeanne remembered one she was particularly keen on. She and the boys locked themselves up in the bathroom, lit a candle and, holding the flame up under a saucer, blackened it with the flame. They then filled it and another saucer with water.

  Jeanne went up to one of the soldiers, the one they called Poppy, a big friendly man, and said solemnly, ‘I want to hypnotise you.’ Sitting on chairs opposite each other, Jeanne gave him the blackened saucer and said, in a deep serious voice, ‘Do as I do.’ Dipping a finger first in the water, then making circles with her finger under the saucer and drawing patterns down her face, she chanted, ‘I am hypnotising you, do as I do and you will sleep . . . sleep . . .’ Poppy’s face was gradually getting streaked with black fingermarks. It was so funny, and Jeanne, trying not to giggle, heard the boys laughing behind her. Eventually Poppy was allowed to look in the mirror and see what all the laughter was about.

  Then Irene told a story: the one about an old lady who has a crooked mouth and can’t blow her candle out. Irene could usually spin it out for a quarter-of-an-hour or so, bringing in the husband, also with a crooked mouth going the other way, and the two sons, one blowing upwards and one blowing downwards. Eventually the neighbour is called in and puts the candle out with moistened fingers. But this time Irene had to tell the story in two languages and it went on forever!

  When the party eventually broke up, everyone agreed they had had a wonderful time. The doctor promised Nell much-needed medical supplies, so difficult to get hold of in the early days of the liberation. She knew where they were wanted most.

  Jeanne sat in Ralph Jones’s jeep, parked in the Grand Place. She was chewing gum and was getting to be quite a chewing-gum expert. This one was a new flavour to her. Rather than sweet, it tasted of spice.

  Ralph was a pleasant quiet American who bore a fleeting resemblance to Bing Crosby. He thought he was Bing Crosby and was always humming Bing’s latest hits under his breath. He turned to Jeanne and said, ‘Was there much barrel around here?’

  ‘Much what?’ Jeanne by now understood most English accents, but this one was different.

  ‘Barrel . . . barrel . . . B-A-T-T-L-E . . . barrel.’

  ‘Oh, battle! I see what you mean.’

  Another lesson learned. She was catching on fast.

  Ralph became a good friend of the family. He would visit whenever he had a few hours and leave them laden with gifts. Jeanne particularly liked the doughnuts he brought with a hole in the middle. They were quite delicious, and Ralph always brought a boxful. He also brought his best friend along, Tom Mahoney. Tom was a very tall, lanky Irish-American, a real joker. He had a beaky nose and a prominent Adam’s apple. He looked for all the world like a friendly turkey. He was always full of fun and laughter.

  The Americans based in Cambrai were giving a show for the schoolchildren of the town, and it was to be held in the Familia cinema, the large picture house down the main street that had been requisitioned during the occupation.

  The children, walking in crocodiles, arrived from all corners of the town. They entered in hushed tones, marvelling at the sumptuous surroundings and the Art Deco statues around the walls of the foyer. Most were too young to remember when they had last been there. The pre-war days were so long ago.

  Two GIs stood either side of the door into the auditorium and handed out an orange and a bag of sweets to each child as they went in. An orange, think of it! Jeanne sat down with her school friends in a comfortable, velvety seat, and ran her fingers along the surface of the shiny, bumpy fruit. She dug her thumbnail into the skin, and a smell reached up and tickled her nose. It was a long-ago smell of Christmas mornings and the joy and excitement of finding a stocking, full to bursting, hanging on the end of her bed.

  There was a tremendous air of anticipation in the cinema. This was a real treat for the children: many had not seen shows in the last few years, and certainly not in such splendid surroundings. Jeanne was so excited she thought she would burst.

  The curtains parted, and there on the stage, was the US Ninth Air Force Big Band playing so loudly Jeanne was nearly knocked off her seat. And such music! Music that had never been heard in Cambrai. The band first played a Glenn Miller hit American Patrol. The bandsmen, in Air Force uniform, had a stand in front of each of them, with ‘Ninth Air Force’ painted on it in silver against a pale-blue background. The bandleader stood facing them, back to the audience, beating in time to the music with his right hand. They presented a polished, well-rehearsed group.

  At first the children in the audience sat open-mouthed. Spellbound, they had never seen anything like it. The glamour and glitz of Hollywood was here in their town. Not on some impersonal cinema screen, but right here where they could reach out and touch it. At the end of the first number the children clapped politely. Then the band struck up In the Mood and the audience, shyly at first, started clapping in time to the music, looking left and right to their friends, smiling, nodding, some even giggling. This was music they could relate to: a young, vibrant music, especially for them. At the end of the number, they erupted into cheers and whistles.

  A sergeant stepped forward to the mic and sang, ‘A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H. . . I’ve got a girl in Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo-zoo.’ Then came a new Bing Crosby song: Swinging on a Star. Jeanne just made out the words, something about a mule, and a pig, and a fish. She thought the songs were brilliant. She had to ask Ralph to teach her the words next time she saw him and then she could write them down in her notebook, the one she still had with all the holiday songs in it. And next . . . well, Jeanne couldn’t believe her eyes. There was Tom Mahoney on the stage doing a mime routine of The Lady Getting in the Bath. He took off imaginary, delicate clothes and laid them gently on an imaginary chair, patting them down and carefully removing stockings one by one. He became annoyed when he snagged one of them on a nail. He felt the bath temperature with an elbow and scalded himself. Then he turned the imaginary cold water tap on, felt the water again until it was to his satisfaction and finally got in. Tall, gawky Tom, no one’s idea of a genteel lady, brought the house down. There was a strong smell, a pungent, heady smell of orange peel and wet knickers in the auditorium.

  Jeanne was beside herself. She stood up and shouted, ‘I know him . . . he’s my friend . . . he’s my friend!’ She first informed the children around her, her classmates. Then the rows around her, at the front, behind and upstairs in the balcony. Soon the whole cinema knew this, indeed, was Jeanne’s friend.


  Next came a couple of comedy numbers: men dressed as women, singing in falsetto voices and with well-padded bosoms to the fore. The audience loved them and laughed until they cried.

  The concert ended with a couple of fast numbers. Two couples, with the girls in short skirts and bobby-sox, gave a jitterbug demonstration, the girls hurled through the air by their partners. The band finished with another Glenn Miller number: String of Pearls. Or rather, they should have finished, but the children wouldn’t let them stop, shouting, ‘En-core . . . En-core . . .!’ The sergeant stepped to the mic once more and sang Don’t Fence Me In, and then the concert was well and truly over. The show had been an unqualified success. The Ninth Air Force Big Band had never played to such an appreciative audience.

  18. Paris Days

  Nell held an important-looking letter in her hand and was quite agitated.

  She said to the girls, ‘Well, you might as well know. It looks as though we may be on our way to England soon. This . . .’ She waved the letter, ‘ . . .is from the British Embassy in Paris, and they say if we make our way there, they’ll repatriate us. We’ll have to leave everything behind, of course.’ She stopped, and then added dreamily, ‘Wouldn’t it just be wonderful if we could be home for Christmas!’

  She went on, ‘We can go as soon as we have our travel passes, we can be on our way then. We’ll go to Paris by train—’

  Jeanne looked up from her book, listening intently for the first time. ‘To Paris? By train?’ To someone who’d only gone as far as Avesnes-sur-Helpe in the last three years or so, going to Paris by train was the equivalent of a rocket trip to the moon.

  Nell then said, a note of anxiety in her voice, ‘And they say they’ll fly us home to England from there.’

  ‘What . . . fly? In a plane?’ Jeanne couldn’t take it in, it was all too much. Only rich people or troops flew, not ordinary people. And now, she, Jeanne Sarginson, was going to fly. In a plane!

  ‘Yes, of course, stupid. We’ll fly in a plane,’ Irene said. ‘How else do people fly? Really, you can be so dense at times!’

  Nell had received a long letter from Tom at last, dated 13th November. It had been brought by hand from England by a Lieutenant Colonel in the French army who had posted it in Paris. In the letter, Tom described the horrendous journey the internees had undertaken.

  The dreaded SS guards had moved into the camp soon after D-Day, replacing the guards the internees had grown to know so well over the years. Tom found that his trips to the village were curtailed. No more bribing the guard with English cigarettes while he visited his French friends.

  The Swedish Red Cross had been negotiating for months with the German authorities for the repatriation of the old and sick, and ex-servicemen who had been interned for more than four years. Tom came in this latter category. When the Allied troops were only one hundred miles from Giromagny and approaching fast, the negotiations were at their most sensitive stage. The German authorities decided to move the whole camp back to Germany, the repatriates in one half of the train and the internees in the other.

  On 2nd September, which had been Liberation day in Rieux, a train, fifteen coaches and seven wagons long, stood in Giromagny station. The men climbed aboard but did not leave for twenty-four hours, as there had been a collision further up the line. Luckily, the local Resistance had been informed that this was a repatriation or they would have made sure the train did not leave. Finally, to the cheers of the local crowd who had come to wave them goodbye, the train left.

  The men, who had been locked up for so long, saw for the first time the devastation and havoc wreaked by the Allied bombers. When they reached Strasbourg the train, with one thousand men and guards on board, was stuck in the station during an air raid while the anti-aircraft guns blazed. The trapped men had their hearts in their mouths. They were relieved to hear the all-clear sound after two hours.

  The train made its way through Germany and up to Bremen on the north coast. There, it was divided in two: half took the internees to a nearby camp; half, with 462 repatriates on board, was shunted into a siding and stayed there for two days and nights until negotiations were completed.

  The train finally arrived at Sassnitz, a port further along the coast. There, three ferryboats were waiting. Tom was tenth on board. He was determined not to be left behind and had not really believed he was on his way to England until that moment. The crossing over to Sweden took four-and-a-half hours, during which time the men were given their first square meal in four years. They arrived in Trelleborg in southern Sweden, and what a welcome awaited them! Bands were playing and the Swedish Red Cross had turned out in full to receive them. Many were on stretchers and were taken directly onto a train made up of first-class carriages. The rest climbed aboard. They travelled through the night to the port of Gothenburg in western Sweden, people cheering and waving Union Jacks from windows and at railway crossings all the way, lights blazing everywhere, as there was no black-out in neutral Sweden. Count Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross, passed from carriage to carriage and shook hands with every one of the men.

  At Gothenburg there were three liners to take the men to England. One was British, the Arundel Castle, and two Swedish: Gripsholm and Drotningholm. Tom was on board the latter, exhausted. The men hadn’t lain down for a week and they all went straight to bed.

  When Tom came to the next morning, he found he had slept in fresh-smelling, crisp white sheets. He washed and dressed, and wandered around the luxury liner in a daze. He looked into the promenade lounge with its comfortable basket chairs facing the sea, popped into the writing room with its polished wood writing desk and deep armchairs, wandered into the leather-upholstered bar, and finally found the dining room with tables laid for a meal on starched tablecloths. There were folded napkins, vases of fresh flowers and a handsome carved frieze above his head. And everywhere, charming, blonde, English-speaking stewardesses. The poor man must have thought he had died and gone to heaven!

  The crossing took six days. A cheer went up from the ex-internees on the ships when the Fleet Air Arm arrived to escort them into British waters and the port of Liverpool. There a tumultuous welcome awaited them. Sirens blared and relatives and friends waved from the quayside.

  In England, the repatriation ships were in the news. The Ministry of Health had broadcast a message on the radio to relatives and friends to write in giving a UK address for the men to go to. The men weren’t allowed off the ships at once, first they were interviewed. Luckily, a postcard from Gramp and Rikkie was waiting for Tom and he was quickly released.

  Some of the other men weren’t so lucky. Petty criminals, who had been hiding in France at the outbreak of the war out of reach of British justice, were grilled by the CID and locked up again, this time in an English jail. Others, First World War deserters with two families – one in England and one in France, were marched off under armed escort.

  Gramp and Rikkie welcomed Tom home with open arms. Bewildered and dazed, Tom rested at Gramps’s for a fortnight. He had half hoped Nell and the girls would be waiting to welcome him when he arrived, but it wasn’t to be.

  He still had no news and didn’t know what had happened to them. Every day, he sent two postcards; one to Rieux and one to Cambrai. He didn’t hear from them until September 29th, through a Gunner named Woodward. Then, almost immediately after that, news came via Good Ol’ Goodall’s wife.

  Meanwhile, he and Rikkie had begun badgering the Foreign Office in London, writing to them most days to request Nell and the girls’ repatriation.

  Tom then approached Courtaulds, his old firm, asking whether he could return to work. He was interviewed three times to assess his state of mind. In December 1944, at the age of forty-seven, Tom was being retrained at the Courtaulds Preston factory.

  Jeanne stood in the corridor, looking out of the train window and watching fields, rivers and villages speeding past, sometimes obliterated by the smoke pouring out of the train engine’s funnel. Nell shouted from the inner carria
ge’s open door. ‘Shut the window quick, Jeannot! There’s a draught! I’m getting covered with smuts from the smoke!’ Jeanne did as she was told, though she couldn’t see so clearly now, as the train windows were all steamed up and dirty. They were on the outskirts of Peronne, going over a river. The rain slowed down to a snail’s pace.

  A man sitting opposite Nell in the carriage, said, ‘They’re having to go slowly here. The bridge was blown up by the Resistance just before the liberation and this bridge is only temporary.’ Jeanne was impressed. She looked down from the window expecting to be plunged any moment into the foaming river below and swept away in the raging torrent, but not before she had rescued her mother, her two sisters and their luggage.

  They were on their way again, gathering speed. Jeanne went back to her musing at her place by the window. That woman, hanging out her washing in her back garden just by the railway line: had she ever been to Paris by train, as Jeanne was doing now? Or did she just plan her life’s routine to the railway timetable? Did the 07.30 coming up from Paris, for example, mean it was time to wake her children up for school? And when the 11.30 from Lille sped through on its way down, was it time to put the lunchtime soup on the stove? Why, thought Jeanne, if you lived by a railway line, you didn’t even need to own a clock.

  When they went through Creil, an important railway junction just north of Paris, there was evidence of heavy bombing, such as Nell and Marie had encountered on their visits to Tom. Nell had described it, but it was the first time that Jeanne and Irene had actually seen it. Marie and Irene joined Jeanne at the window and looked out in disbelief. Mile upon mile of railway tracks, and buildings surrounding the tracks, were devastated. They simply did not exist any more. It was as though a giant had pounded the area with a huge fist over and over again. Many of the railway lines were out of action and it seemed as though theirs was the only serviceable one.