Defying the Nazis

by Artemis Joukowsky

  Then came a second cable from Dexter.

  ADVISED AMCROSS LANDING FIFTEEN THOUSAND CASES MILK MARSEILLE SUNDAY COMMITTEE SENDING NO ADDITIONAL MILK RECOMMENDS NO FURTHER MASS FEEDING OR GENERAL RELIEF FRANCE SUGGESTS DESIRABILITY DEVOTE EFFORTS EVACUATING WHERE POSSIBLE THOSE IN DANGER. ROBERT DEXTER.

  The cables were a shock. Waitstill and Martha were assured when they left for Lisbon that they were free to choose their commitments as conditions dictated, just as they had after the Einmarsch in Prague. That Bob Dexter had authored this repudiation of their judgment was particularly hurtful.

  Dexter was an old friend and influential Unitarian who had pushed hard for both the creation of the USC and the Sharps’ designation as its first commissioners. Where was his loyalty and support now?

  The rebuff did not stop them from carrying on. At six on Sunday morning, July 14—Bastille Day—they pointed the Matford north for France, via Spain. They loaded it with several liters of gasoline in jerry cans, courtesy of Orlena Scoville, as well as packages for internees in the camps and rounds of cheese that Scoville hoped they could share with the children of France.

  They lashed a one hundred fifty-pound bag of sugar to the roof. On either side of the car flew makeshift cotton flags, Old Glory and the French Red Cross ensign. Martha and Waitstill also carried identification as certified representatives of the French Red Cross, into which Ambassador Amé-Leroy had inducted them.

  The first day on the road was carefree. The car performed smoothly, and they enjoyed the verdant Portuguese countryside as would any pair of tourists. They crossed into Spain the next morning and proceeded again without incident until they passed through Avila, where they saw the first signs of destruction from the recently ended Spanish Civil War. “However,” Martha noted, “this did not prepare us for the devastation to come.”

  As they headed on toward Madrid, Martha remembered,

  We passed piles of bricks, masonry and rubble, obviously the remains of houses, blown up or shelled, surrounded by outbuildings and trees that were scarred and broken. The road was filled with so many holes that navigation was difficult. As we topped the crest, we saw what must have been a string of pillboxes which had been blasted into twisted steel and concrete.

  Now we found every dwelling or shack on either side of the road had been blown up. Nothing moved, not even chickens or goats, all the way to the horizon. There were only vultures, flying and swooping overhead, as we picked our way down the mountainside.

  At the base of the Guadarrama Mountains we drove through San Lorenzo de El Escorial, where seven or eight thousand people once lived. It was now deserted, completely devastated, every home a shambles. Someone had erected a lean-to against the single standing wall in the village. We thought we saw eyes as we passed. It was like driving through a skull.

  The car developed a troubling motor noise on the afternoon of the second day. When they reached Madrid, the Sharps stopped at an old office building that had been turned into a pension, or boardinghouse, and asked about a room, as well as directions to the closest Ford dealership.

  “The owner offered to reserve us a room only if we could pay in pesos,” Martha recalled. “He drew a map to the nearby Ford agency which we were able to follow. Most of Madrid’s squares had been renamed for civil war heroes or battles, and some streets were impassable. But we actually found a Ford sign on a half-demolished building and, miracle of miracles, a mechanic who not only could diagnose the Matford’s problem, but also was able to produce the part with which to fix it! Perhaps there weren’t so many Fords being fixed just then. But we were in luck.”

  Since the car wouldn’t be ready for a couple of hours, the Sharps took a taxi back to their pension. They paid the cab driver in cash. Their change came in the form of scrip, supposedly applicable to their next taxi ride.

  The bill of fare was limited that night. The pension owner said he could make them an omelet with bootlegged eggs, “since you are special friends.” Butter, he told them, was four dollars per pound. Tea was not available, but he had some bootleg coffee. Martha found a piece of hair in the black bread. “They’re sweeping the floors of the granaries now,” he shrugged.

  After paying in cash for the meal, the room, and a parking space on the street in front of the café, Waitstill and Martha cabbed back to the Ford agency to retrieve the Matford.

  They settled up with the mechanic, filled the Matford’s tank at five dollars per liter, accepted another handful of scrip in change—everything was redeemable at the border, they were assured—and headed back for the pension for a night’s sleep against another tough day on the road.

  Next morning, the mountainous leg from Madrid to the ancient Catalonian city of Lerida brought them face-to-face with more misery. “We were so occupied with seeing everything and watching the road that we hardly realized we had crossed four mountain ranges that same day, many of them mist-clad,” Martha wrote. “We even tied our raincoats over the bag of sugar to prevent it from melting. But we could never forget the sight of people living in caves in abject poverty and children foraging for food in refuse piles and cans like animals. Only in the big cities did we see people able to forget the daily horrors and think of something beyond their human suffering. The frightened peasants without seed, tools, work, homes or hope were a nightmare for us.”

  The final push to beat the clock began early on July 17 in Lerida and took the Sharps through Barcelona, where they met briefly with the US consul general and picked up their messages, then north along Spain’s Costa Brava to Portbou, where they would cross the frontier into southern France.

  “It was like life after death,” wrote Martha. “Behind us were the black mountains, red and white boulders, cold swirling winds[,] clouds and circling birds of prey. The sunlight and the incredible blues of the Mediterranean picked up our spirits. We might reach the frontier by nightfall we thought, then over the border where a dear friend and our French work waited!”

  But there were serious, last-minute scares.

  In addition to the papers being out of date, there were currency problems at Portbou. “The notations of exchange and our numerous paper slips didn’t tally,” she recalled, “and there were no refunds anyway. However, a very cooperative officer changed our remaining pesos into French francs and let us go.”

  They drove the short distance to the frontier only to encounter a barricade across the road. Dozens of people were milling around. When the Sharps asked what was going on, they were told that the frontier was closed. In fact, it had been closed for two weeks.

  “We couldn’t believe it! We drove on to the little house beside the barrier and spoke to the guard. ‘The frontier is closed,’ was all he’d say. ‘Nobody may enter France.’”

  When Waitstill inquired when the border would open, the guard shrugged. “Who knows?”

  When they asked his best advice in the circumstance, the guard suggested they get a room, then turned and disappeared into the guardhouse.

  The prospect of being stuck indefinitely in Portbou with their milk shipment who knows where was profoundly distressing, particularly since there seemed to be no way out of the predicament.

  Then Martha’s intuition for just how to finesse such moments kicked in. She’d first surprised herself with this talent when she had successfully slipped Mr. X past the Gestapo agents at the British embassy in Prague.

  She remembered Don Lowrie saying a year before that logic ruled the French more than did the law. She was now ready to put Lowrie’s theory to the test. She thought about the logic of children starving while the milk was on its way. Then she gathered the letters of introduction they’d received from various French officials in the United States. She explained to the soldier on duty that she and her husband had come to France to feed starving children; in fact, the milk they wanted to distribute might already be in the country, waiting for them. She asked if he’d take their documents to the commandant and explain to him why they needed to enter France at once. Obviously
moved, thinking perhaps of his own children, the soldier took the papers and set off for a small house in a hill.

  After ten or fifteen minutes, he returned with a uniformed officer. “Madame Sharp,” the guard said, “I should like to present my commandant.”

  The commandant was all French gallantry. After bowing over Martha’s hand, he asked about their “errand of mercy” After she explained, the commandant spoke: “Madame, your papers and letters from distinguished members of our Ministère des Affaires Étrangères are all void. They are dated before the armistice. Those who wrote them are no longer representatives of our country. Even your carnet de passage is no longer legal. But to me, as a father and a Frenchman, your desire to feed our starving children at the very earliest date is of the utmost importance. I agree it is essential that you are given every assistance to start your work as soon as possible. Therefore, I will personally take responsibility for speeding your way into France and a thousand blessings go with you.”1

  Lowrie’s theory about French logic and, in this case, mercy trumping legalities proved true. Martha’s beauty and disarming, dimpled smile might well have helped.

  They drove the thirty miles to Cerbère, arriving there past midnight, grateful to be, at last, in France.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Reunion in Cerbère

  Friday morning, July 19, 1940, began with breakfast with Don Lowrie at the Cerbère train station calé. Then all three climbed into the little Matford for the drive north to Perpignan. There, Lowrie introduced Martha and Waitstill to the mayor, who favored them with a “bon,” or permission, to buy gasoline, which was strictly rationed. Then on to Nîmes that same afternoon to see the two-thousand-year-old Roman temple, the Maison Carrée.

  The next day Waitstill, Martha, and Lowrie drove on to Marseille and took rooms at the Terminus Hotel, directly adjacent to the Gare de Marseille Saint-Charles, the city’s huge old train station, which soon would figure large in their lives. They also made an appointment for Monday to see Richard Allen, local head of the American Red Cross.

  Marseille challenged Waitstill’s sturdy New England rectitude. It was, he pronounced, “one of the most dangerous and picturesque great cities in the world,” whose old main street, the Canebière, was “the stamping ground of drug-pushers, swindlers, prostitutes, gamblers, and men with commission to commit murder—a more diversified gamut of criminals than any other city of the world.” As he also noted, it was the center in France for people fleeing the Nazi juggernaut.1

  The rest of the weekend was given over to relaxation. Although food shortages were critical and growing worse all over Vichy France, fish of all sorts were still abundant in Marseille. “Vendors sold a harvest of the Mediterranean catch in stalls along the waterfront,” Martha wrote, “shrimp, oysters and other fish that were strange to us. Don suggested we go to the world-famous Pascal’s for bouillabaisse. Afterward, we walked back to the hotel. All of a sudden, all of the lights went out—our first blackout. With Don’s expert guidance we found our way to the Terminus, and with the aid of candles gratefully went to bed.”

  Richard Allen was another acquaintance from Paris in the summer of 1939, not a good friend but a respected colleague with whom the Sharps enjoyed cordial relations. It was therefore a surprise for Waitstill to find the Red Cross man stiff and distant at their meeting that Monday, July 22. They’d known one another by their first names in Paris. Now it was “Mr. Sharp” whenever Allen addressed his old acquaintance.

  “I inquired of myself, What is wrong?” Waitstill remembered. “I am not the most sensitive person in the world. But I can discern, I believe, a certain frigidity in the atmosphere.”

  Allen evidently registered Waitstill’s unease. “All right,” he said at length. “Mr. Sharp, you might as well know what has happened.” Producing a folder, he said, “I have to tell you, sir—I have no choice—that something has happened that bears upon your work here and particularly bears upon any requests that you would make of me.”

  With that, Allen pushed across his desk a letter written on familiar AUA stationery and carrying at its bottom Robert Dexter’s equally familiar signature. According to Waitstill’s memory, the letter read: “This is to inform you that Mr. and Mrs. Waitstill Sharp are shortly arriving, if their plans hold up, in Marseille, as the newly-chosen representatives of the Unitarian Service Committee. I must say to you that they come without any approval from me. In fact, I actively disapproved of their candidacy for this post and their selection to do this work. I regret conveying this word to you, but I have no choice.”

  Waitstill’s characterization of the letter, which has been lost, might have been too harsh. Dexter had wired the milk money, albeit with misgivings. Although the United States was not yet in the war, Robert Dexter was. An ardent Anglophile, he unequivocally supported the British sea blockade of Germany and the occupied areas as necessary to defeat the Nazis. Denying the Nazis products or materials they might exploit in their war effort was a point of principle.

  Whatever Dexter intended to accomplish with his letter, its effect was to stoke Waitstill’s angry astonishment, precipitating a permanent estrangement. “I have never been more amazed,” Waitstill said almost forty years later, “and I have seen some amazing turns of events. Nor have I ever, at age seventy-six, encountered any denouement like this.”

  He kept his remarks brief that day in Allen’s office, explaining that he and Martha had been told by none other than AUA president Dr. Eliot himself that it was their moral obligation to come to France. He would otherwise keep his own counsel until he next met up with Dr. Dexter. “I am not going to let this matter rest here,” he said. “You can be assured of that.”

  And he did not. In at least two lengthy written reports to Dexter, Waitstill explained the rationale behind the milk delivery, reminding his colleague that he and Martha were sanctioned to do what they deemed best in whatever circumstances they might encounter.

  In their official joint report to the AUA, the Sharps also made it a point not just to justify the milk delivery but also to celebrate it. They emphasized not only the project’s success but also its key importance in establishing their credentials with skeptical French officials, whose vital help included precious and scarce supplies of gasoline. The French officials’ trust, they wrote, would have been “absolutely impossible to gain if we had announced ourselves as interested only in the rescue of distinguished refugee intellectuals.”2

  Waitstill told Allen he would gladly answer any questions he had about the matter. “I agree with you that it appears incredible,” Allen answered. “Now each of us can do his best for our common cause, the relief of need and suffering in unoccupied France.”

  Hugh Fullerton, the US consul general in Marseille, mentioned at his meeting with the Sharps the next day that he too had heard from Dexter. Fullerton, whose previous posting had been Paris, where he also had been among Waitstill and Martha’s network of friends and contacts, knew their work in detail. More important, Fullerton realized from personal experience how urgently needed their milk program was, especially in view of the Red Cross’s distribution problems. Fullerton was prepared to extend any help he could.

  Over the next few days, the Sharps’ relationship with Richard Allen warmed considerably. “Keep in touch,” he told them, “and when you come to the end of your milk shipment I’ll be glad to try to help you get more milk from the International Red Cross.” Allen also issued them both an ordre de mission on Red Cross stationery, a useful document to establishment credibility with wary French officials as well as to gain priority access to gasoline.

  With the matter of the milk delivery settled, Waitstill and Martha turned their attention to the welfare of Czech refugees. Don Lowrie introduced them to Vladimir Vochoc. A onetime college professor and former chief of the Czech foreign service’s personnel division, Vochoc had been his country’s consul in Marseille at the time of the Einmarsch. Since then, the ex-diplomat and academic had wittily restyled himself co
nsul of “Czechoslovakia in liquidation,” and in that capacity happily issued precious Czech passports to any and all enemies of the Reich.

  They weren’t legal, of course, but they usually worked, and they saved an untold number of lives. When his supply of blanks from Prague ran out, Vochoc had his own passports printed in Bordeaux, in the Occupied Zone.

  Of immediate concern to Vochoc—and Don Lowrie, who was local delegate for the American Friends of Czechoslovakia—was a group of about a thousand Czech soldiers and their families, at that moment encamped at Agde, on the Mediterranean coast near Perpignan. When the Nazis had taken Czechoslovakia, these men had all joined the French army. After Paris fell, they were led south by their general, Sergej Ingr, who later became minister of defense of the Czech government in exile in London. Ingr hoped to put them on ships to North Africa, where they might regroup and join the Allied armies. It was critical to evacuate the Czechs. The Nazis considered them deserters, a crime for which the penalty was execution.

  In the meantime, the refugee Czechs’ predicament was exacerbated by new, anti-immigrant laws from Vichy that made proof of French birth a requirement for obtaining a work permit. Not even naturalized citizens could legally obtain the vital documents.

  Waitstill, Martha, and Lowrie visited the Czech camp at Agde with Vladimir Vochoc on July 25. Martha, who had been given a small amount of discretionary funds by AmRelCzech, found that some of the men’s relatives were staying near the camp. One was Anna Pollakova, trained and experienced as an interpreter and a secretary, who appeared in rags. She told Martha that her brother, a Czech soldier, had escaped to join the British army. Pollakova was down to her last thousand francs, about twenty dollars. Fortunately, she had an address for her brother in Great Britain. Martha agreed to wire him and also arranged for the woman to go to work in Vochoc’s office. AmRelCzech would subsidize her salary.