by Rosemary Say
When I had left Avignon the scene at the station had been one of chaos: bewildered and relieved arrivals meeting the mass of nervous, expectant people waiting desperately for news. But this was nothing in comparison to what I saw at the Gare de Lyon in Paris. It was utter pandemonium. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of frantic people pushing, shoving and shouting to get on our train for the return journey. They were demented, fleeing for their lives. Well before we reached the platform they were boarding the train through the doors and windows, pushing possessions and children in ahead of them.
For a while I almost doubted that we’d be able to get off. As in Avignon, Joseph used my heavy suitcases to shove his way through the crowd. We struggled out of the station. I was anxious to get to the British Embassy but couldn’t face making my way there with my luggage. Joseph suggested that we went to a nearby bar, where he asked the patron to look after my suitcases for a while.
‘I don’t know which of us faces the greater tragedy,’ he said. ‘Sois courageuse.’ (‘Be brave.’) He kissed me and departed.
When I arrived at the embassy I found that the British authorities had left Paris the night before. There was a note pinned to the door advising those of us who were left behind to seek help at the US Embassy. With a rising sense of panic I asked a passing old man how to get there, saying that I was English. He explained briefly. He then crossed himself.
‘Que Dieu vous protège,’ (‘May God protect you.’) he said.
The streets were very quiet. There was no sound at all. I walked past the Café de Paris which was one of the few places open. I sat alone on its terrace while attentive waiters served me coffee, bread and fruit. I was worried about my luggage and decided to return to the bistro where I had left it before trying to find the US Embassy. The large and rather greasy-faced patron was there by himself, polishing glasses. He smiled at me.
‘You can leave your things here for a while. They’ll be safe. They say that Paris is going to be declared an open city.’
I looked at him quizzically.
‘Meaning, Mademoiselle, that there’ll be no fighting. The German army will be allowed to march in unopposed.’
I nodded but really had nothing to say to this.
‘Even so, don’t wander around the streets too much. Use the Métro while it’s still open. It’s safer.’
Just then I heard dull thuds of gunfire. I ran to the window. Great pillars of smoke were rising up into the peerless blue sky. He chuckled.
‘We’re blowing up the fuel storage depots before the Germans arrive.’
‘Why?’
‘They’ll be here in a few hours. We don’t want the bastards to help themselves to free fuel, do we? They’ll have everything else in the city, though.’ He spat on the floor rather melodramatically.
‘The politicians have already left and the deux cents familles.2 They’ve made sure that they’re safe. Most of us ordinary people are trying to get out today.’
‘And what about you?’
‘Some of us have to stay.’
Why? Was it simply out of concern for his property? And what of his family, I thought, noticing his wedding ring.
He tapped the highly polished brass counter and sighed. ‘Don’t go out yet, Mademoiselle, you’ll get covered in soot from the fires. Sit down and have a cognac.’
He poured drinks for both of us and got on methodically with his work. I sat at the bar and sipped my drink. I wasn’t used to spirits and the cognac burnt my throat. It began to calm me down after a few minutes but I was still desperately worried about my situation and in a state of nervous excitement.
As I sat there, watching the soot raining down, I heard the first of the loudspeakers booming out: ‘Young men, save yourselves. Go quickly.’ I later learnt that this was the first open cry of the collaborationists telling the youth of Paris to make their way by whatever means to the Brittany coast. It was a despicable measure designed to lower morale. Ironically, of course, it was precisely what I had been intending to do.
After a while the air seemed to clear a little. I got up, thanked the patron and hurried off to the US Embassy. When I arrived there I was directed to a side entrance. Inside there was a long queue of people, presumably most of them British. I got talking to the person in front of me, a Mr Parsons. He was a middle-aged man from Hastings who had settled in Paris after the Great War, working as a sales rep for a British textiles company. He told me that his French wife and children had travelled to his parents in England the week before. He was now desperate to follow them.
We stood in the queue for a number of hours. This pleasant man filled me in on the motley selection of British nationals who were waiting resignedly to hear what was to become of them. A group of Protestant nuns stood ahead of us. They were from a convent just outside Paris, he explained. The few stranded travellers dotted around were quite easy to pick out. There were a number of local British residents like him, most of whom he seemed to know. We were truly the odds and sods of Paris.
I finally managed to see an embassy official. He was a slight, young man of about thirty with an extremely harassed look on his face. He was obviously out of his depth here. After all, what was he supposed to do with all these people? I came quickly to the point.
‘I arrived in Paris from Avignon this morning. I have no idea what to do now.’
‘Why on earth did you come up from the south?’ He looked at me incredulously.
‘Well, the British Consulate in Marseille advised me to go to Paris and then to slip through to Rennes,’ I explained defensively. ‘They said I could go on to St-Malo from there and get a boat to England.’
‘Slip through?’ he snorted. ‘Slip through what? The German army? That man in Marseille is mad.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t the Consul himself who told me this. He’d already left when I telephoned.’
My words sounded more and more feeble. Tears began to stream down my face. The young official looked embarrassed; I don’t know if this was a result of his outburst or of my response. He peered down at the papers on his desk.
‘It’s too late to get out now, Miss Say. There’s no way of organizing transport. The German army is just outside the city. It’ll be here in a few hours.’ He flicked through a pile of papers on his desk and pulled out a sheet.
‘Look, why don’t you try the American Hospital at Neuilly? You’re young and they might be able to fix you up with something. But you’d better hurry. There’s already a crowd trying to get jobs.’
He scribbled an address for me on a piece of paper, smiled briefly and beckoned to the next person in line. I got up and left quickly. There must have been at least thirty people behind me still waiting to see him. I clutched at the straw that he had given me. I had heard of this hospital: it had a reputation as one of the most expensive nursing homes in Europe.
I was desperate to get there but my first thoughts on leaving the embassy were for my luggage way over on the other side of the city. Would it be safe? I suddenly woke up to reality. What did my luggage matter? Those suitcases had dominated my life since leaving Avignon. I hadn’t dared leave the train because of them. I had arrived late at the US Embassy because I needed to check with the patron that they were safe. Enough. I was trapped in Paris with the German army on its doorstep. I had nowhere to stay that night and no means of supporting myself. I needed to get to Neuilly as soon as possible.
Coming out of the Métro, I walked in the blazing sun along big avenues and past enormous houses which were shuttered and deserted. There wasn’t a sound on the streets. Everyone had gone from this rich and elegant quarter of the Paris suburbs. I walked on alone, searching rather frantically for the hospital. I was acutely aware that I had only 650 francs in my pocket (just over £150 in today’s money). How long would this last me if I couldn’t get a job?
I was still feeling slightly lightheaded from the cognac; it had been a few hours since I had sat in the bistro with the owner and had eaten nothing since then. I s
aw a small girl sitting on a step playing contentedly with her doll. A while later a British sailor went drunkenly by, humming to himself.
I found the hospital at last. It was a huge turn-of-the-century building with a wonderful, curved driveway leading to the entrance. There was a large and very un-English queue of people jostling and shouting. I joined them. The late afternoon sun was still hot and after a while I started to doze on my feet. I was rudely shaken out of my dream-like state by a harsh voice.
‘Well, what can you do, girl?’
I looked up to see the most enormous woman glaring at me. Matron. She seemed like an absolute sod. And indeed she was, as I was to discover.
‘Oh, most things,’ I stammered. ‘If I put my mind to it.’
I smiled at her. I must have seemed very hearty and jolly. She gave a sort of snort and nodded.
‘Well, collect a uniform down the corridor. The nurse there will tell you what to do.’ Without another word she marched away.
I was a bit dazed. Why had I been chosen out of the crowd? I didn’t dwell for too long on this question and hurried off down the corridor. Within a few minutes I had been fitted out with a striped blue dress, crisp white apron and white cap.
A rather distracted staff nurse told me my duties. I was to be a fille de salle or chambermaid: scrubbing, swabbing down and polishing the long corridors during the day and helping out in the doctors’ dining room in the evenings. I could sleep on the couch in the staff flat of one of the nurses nearby. There would be full board but no pay. I was to start work the next day at 5.30 a.m.
On my second day at work I was told to report to the office of the hospital administrator, Mr Edward Close. He was an American with a beaming face and a jovial manner. He was apparently very popular with his staff but I found him rather slimy and took an instant dislike to him. He sat at his desk and rapidly took down my details and background. When he had finished he put away his pad and turned to me.
‘The German army is entering Paris as I speak. But rest assured, Miss Say, not a hair on your head will be touched.’ I wasn’t particularly reassured by his words and merely nodded.
‘Are there any other English people here?’ I asked him. ‘I’d like to see them if there are. If that’s possible, of course.’
I simply wanted to talk to an English person. I couldn’t say precisely why. Perhaps it might give me a sense of security. Mr Close shifted in his seat a little uneasily and referred to some papers on his desk.
‘Yes. There are three British servicemen here. But I can let you see only one of them. The others are too badly injured.’ He scribbled a room number on a piece of paper which he gave to me.
‘But watch your step, young lady. I’m expecting the German High Command any day and I don’t want anything out of order.’
I thanked him and hurried out. Before returning to work I went to the canteen to snatch a quick cup of coffee. A young American doctor approached me.
‘Hey, you’re the new English girl, right? Do you want to go downtown to see the German army arriving? The truce has just been signed. They’re coming in.’
‘Yes, all right. But could we stop first near the Gare de Lyon to pick up my luggage?’
‘Sure.’ He smiled.
‘What about Matron?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about the dragon. She’s already taken off to see them. Come on!’
We set out in his car with three other American doctors. The transport system was now closed down and I was relieved to be able to collect my possessions. Apart from anything else, I desperately wanted some clean underwear. When we got to the bistro the patron was relieved to hand over my suitcases. He seemed wary, fearful even. Perhaps not surprisingly, for harbouring English luggage could no longer be considered a friendly act and might lead to reprisals.
We hurried off and parked in a spot specially reserved for Americans just by the Arc de Triomphe. I sat on the car roof looking across at a German military band playing on and on as we waited for the parade to begin.
When it finally started it was a most amazing sight. The powerful war machine rolled down the Champs-Elysées: gleaming horses, tanks, machinery, guns and thousands upon thousands of soldiers. The procession was immaculate, shining and seemingly endless. It was like a gigantic, grey-green snake that wound itself around the heart of this broken city, which was waiting pathetically to be swallowed up. There was a huge crowd of onlookers, most of them silent but some cheering. My companions were like small boys: calling out the names of the different regiments, exclaiming at the modern tanks and whistling at the wonderful horses.
I was quiet, fully conscious that I was caught up in a moment of history. Even so, I had no grand emotions. And I certainly had no fear as a British person watching the German army pass within yards of me. What I do remember feeling was more actual and commonplace: tremendous tiredness and relief at having found somewhere to stay. But as the hours passed and the seemingly unending spectacle continued, I began to feel a little ashamed at having accepted the invitation. I thought of my family and friends back in London and of the fears for the future that they must have. I wanted to go back to the hospital.
Occupied France and Vichy France from 1940
The Germans took over the Occupied Zone, the richest and most densely populated parts of France. The smaller part of the country – the zone libre – was ruled by Prime Minister Pétain from the spa town of Vichy. The demarcation line was heavily manned by German authorities.
The following afternoon I visited the injured British serviceman. I went to the room number I had been given by Mr Close, knocked on the door and cautiously went in. Propped up on the bed sat a young man with his head swathed in bandages. I smiled weakly at him, not knowing what to say. He stared back at me for a while then shouted out.
‘Pat! My God! Pat Say! What are you doing here?’ He let out a laugh. ‘It’s me. Ben Everton-Jones.’
I gave a gasp of amazement. Ben was an old boyfriend of my sister’s from London. The last time I had seen him had been at a farewell party in Hampstead a couple of nights before I had left London.
He explained what had happened to him and the other men. He was an RAF officer who had been shot down a few days previously. Although his head injuries were horrific, he assured me that they weren’t life threatening. The others had been less lucky. One, Major Toby Tailyour, was close to death. The other, Lieutenant Mike Ansell, the British Army’s youngest commanding officer, lay blinded. His unit had been cut off in northern France and had taken refuge in the loft of a farm building. Some retreating British soldiers had mistaken them for Germans and had fired on them, hitting Ansell in the face at point-blank range. An American ambulance crew working for the Red Cross had transported the three of them to the hospital disguised as French soldiers.
As I looked at Ben in his bloody bandages I suddenly became overwhelmed. Life was becoming a nightmare. All I had wanted to do was get home to England but it looked like I had got it all so wrong. I was trapped in Paris and would never see my family again. My pent-up fears came to the surface and I began to cry violently. Ben was terribly embarrassed by my outburst but very kind.
‘Don’t worry, Pat,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Look, we’re both in the system now. They’ll send us home as soon as they can.’
He probably thought of me as a burdensome kid sister. I didn’t mind. Ben was a link with the normal world back home. After that I saw him whenever I could.
I was to spend just a few weeks at the hospital. They passed quickly. The hours were long: I woke up at 5 a.m. and started swabbing down the corridors half an hour later, with a break in the afternoon while I slept flat out. In the evening I waited on the doctors in their dining room. They were confident and detached Americans and appeared to find the arrival of the German army merely an interesting phenomenon. They were supposed to finish their meal by eleven but would often stay chatting until much later while I worked around them and tried to hurry them up. All the breakfast things would ha
ve to be laid before I could run out into the night to my couch. The one compensation was that I could finish any left-over wine or champagne.
I kept a low profile and hardly spoke to anyone during my stay, apart from Ben. There seemed to be no English staff around. The doctors were friendly enough but distant and my French co-workers largely ignored me. Perhaps they were afraid.
I certainly had no feelings of fear, especially as the US Ambassador arrived in the maids’ dressing room one day to assure us that we would all be protected, whatever our nationality. I was completely cut off from the outside world and was shielded from the German occupation of the city, cocooned as I was in that big hospital and exhausted by the long hours of work. I was just one of many. As at boarding school, I clung to the comfort of a routine life in an institution. My one outside sortie to watch the Germans entering Paris had been at the beginning of my stay. I had a special permission pass to be out after curfew so I could go the short distance to my flat after work but I hadn’t used it to go further afield. Midnight was no time for an English person to be scuttling around the outskirts of occupied Paris.
This rather sheltered life lasted precisely three weeks. One morning early in July I was summoned once again to Mr Close’s office. He beckoned me to a chair. There was an uncomfortable silence while he fiddled with his tie and avoided eye contact. His jovial manner of our previous meeting had gone.
‘Miss Say,’ he said at last. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to leave immediately. The German authorities have asked us if there are any English people here. We shall have to tell them the truth. It would be awkward for all concerned if you were caught here. Not least for you, of course.’
‘But you told me I’d be looked after!’ I spluttered in fear and anger. ‘So did your ambassador.’
‘The British Interests Section at our embassy should be able to do something for you,’ he said by way of reply. ‘It’s a Mr Sutton in charge, I believe. Could you please see Matron immediately to make your arrangements for leaving.’
