At nightfall, they came upon a farmer and his hay wagon. Unlike others they had passed that were being pulled by humans, this farmer was still using his horse, and the animal looked fairly sturdy. Virginia negotiated a deal with him. He would take them to their destination, Cahors, (he was going in that direction anyway) and they would give him the bicycle upon their arrival. They spent a surprisingly comfortable night on beds of hay, sharing the wagon with the farmer’s wife, toddler, and dog. At sunrise, Virginia, Claire, and the farmer’s family pooled their food for a meager breakfast and then continued down the road.
The two women, still in shock over the capitulation, tried to guess what the future would hold for France. Virginia insisted that Britain’s determination to repel the Germans, along with President Roosevelt’s strong feelings about supporting America’s longtime ally, would make the Nazi hold on Europe brief. But Claire wasn’t appeased. Americans, she told Virginia, were often unrealistically optimistic. She was ashamed of the collapse of France.
The women arrived in Cahors a day later, dirty, tired, and hungry. Claire’s father owned the Boucherie de la Tour, a butcher shop that had been opened by his grandfather seventy years earlier. The family lived in an apartment above the shop. Claire’s mother burst into tears the moment her daughter walked into the kitchen.
For the first time Virginia realized what a sight they must have been. Their hair had not been combed in three days and bits of hay from the wagon stuck out between the strands. They still wore their uniforms, which were soiled with dried blood and dust. Virginia’s had a tear in one elbow and the right shoulder of Claire’s had ripped out at the back. They wore grimy anklets and shoes, which were caked with mud. Their legs were dirty, bruised, and scratched from the dry hay they had been sitting in for two days.
Like her daughter, Mme de la Tour reigned in her emotions as quickly as they had gotten away from her. She insisted that the women take baths immediately, a luxury they hadn’t experienced in ages. And a short while later they sat down to what looked like a feast.
The meat and hearty gravy melted in Virginia’s mouth. She couldn’t quite place the flavor, but figured it had been so long since she had eaten a decent meal, she just wasn’t accustomed to good food. She asked Mme de la Tour what kind of beef it was. Claire’s mother chuckled and told her apologetically they hadn’t had beef in quite a while. They were eating rabbit—an animal that had not only become France’s new plat du jour, but a lucrative enterprise as well. M. de la Tour had followed the government’s urging and begun raising them several months earlier. He had sold quite a few of them to the army, she told Virginia proudly. They grew quickly and needed very little space. And after all, they reproduce like rabbits, she said with a laugh.
As good as the meal was, Virginia had to fight to stay awake to finish it. She would be sleeping in the room that had belonged to Jean-Paul. It was peacefully quiet in the cozy bed; there were no guns booming from far-off turrets, no sharp cracks from sentries’ rifles, no cries of pain from nearby wounded. Virginia was clean, well fed, and comfortable for the first time in months. The horrible war she’d been in the midst of just a short week earlier was a nightmare from a different time. But it was a nightmare she would soon revisit.
6
The Dark Years Begin
What Virginia woke to the next morning, and what she would see in the days and months to come, was a nearly unrecognizable France. Newspapers reported that the German military had taken over Paris, using the former French governmental buildings as their own and taking up residence in the grand apartments and hotels. Except for German army cars, everyone else in Paris traveled on foot, by bicycle, or braved the suffocatingly overcrowded métro. Nazi flags fluttered in the summer breeze across the city, including those at the new Gestapo headquarters on the Rue des Saussaies. Furthermore, Paris’s Le Bourget airport was now the new home of the Luftwaffe wing in France.
Virginia felt anger and sadness at the same time as she read about France’s new status as a conquered nation. The happy times she had spent in Paris as a child, a student, and an adult flooded to mind. How could that have melted away so easily?
In Vichy, there were also reports of commandeered hotels. Pétain and his new French government occupied the popular resort the Hôtel du Parc to work hard at re-creating a nation. Pétain had empowered his vice premier, Pierre Laval, to draw up a “new kind of constitution,” giving France an “ultramodern version of democracy.” The old motto of liberté, égalité, fraternité, born during the French Revolution, was junked and replaced with a new version, commensurate with the near-Fascist values the new government stressed: travaille, famille, patrie—work, family, fatherland. In other words, the job of the French was, as it was for the rest of the Nazi empire, to produce goods and future soldiers for the Reich.
Over the next few days, Virginia witnessed Gallic emotions running the gamut. Some French people swallowed Pétain’s story. He was, after all, a hero of World War I. If he told Vichy France, via his radio addresses, that the Germans had grand plans that would make the country strong and powerful again, there was no reason not to believe him. Perhaps the Germans really were dedicated to improving French lifestyle.
Other citizens reasoned that Pétain’s advanced age was an advantage and a great deterrent from waging future wars. Still others were fearful of their new government and its German influence. In any event, it was obvious to Virginia that the French were traumatized, dazed, and anesthetized from their recent defeat. A fog of passive isolationism seemed to have settled over the country, a country suddenly closed off from the rest of the world.
Stories abounded of Germans living the high life in France’s large cities. But they weren’t alone. Some French police officers had taken possession of prime apartments in the occupied zone as well. They weren’t required to use the newly issued ration cards and didn’t have to stand in food lines. They ate at the expensive restaurants alongside the Germans, restaurants where there were never any food shortages.
If they were nothing else, the Germans were organized. They divided the country into twelve regions, each with its own prison camps. A total of eighty of them opened, their purpose supposedly to house the thousands of prisoners hauled off to Germany during the fighting who were now being returned to France. But it wasn’t just prisoners who were filling the camps. Suddenly, Jews from Alsace were being sent to the camps in the Pyrénées. This news was disconcerting and the topic of conversations at the de la Tour residence centered around the Germans’ treatment of France’s Jewish population.
First, there was the “surrender on demand” clause in the armistice that dictated that the Vichy government must assist the Nazis in tracking down “undesirable” people and deporting them to other “more suitable” areas of the country. Next came the “Laws of Exception and Exclusion,” which revoked rights Jewish citizens had enjoyed for generations.
Virginia knew that French Jews had never been completely integrated into society. She’d read more than one newspaper editorial with an anti-Semitic slant. And she knew that the friendship she and Claire shared, one between a Gentile and a Jew, was rare. Most Jewish families were close only to other Jews and had very few Gentiles they could turn to in time of need. This was definitely becoming a time of need.
Virginia encouraged her friends to consider relocating, but the de la Tours were not interested. Jews had been discriminated against for centuries, M. de la Tour told Virginia. It was not new and certainly nothing to uproot the family over. Furthermore, the Nazis couldn’t possibly round up all the Jews in the country.
But the Germans accelerated their anti-Jewish movement. The Law of July 17 forbade anyone not born of French fathers from becoming a civil servant. This affected the great number of Jews who had come from other countries in the previous decades, as well as those fleeing Nazi Germany. Regardless of who had become a French citizen, bloodlines were considered before citizenship.
A short time
later, Pétain repealed the Marchandeau Law, which outlawed racial libel. Vichy journalists, heavily influenced by the Nazis, were now able to express their venomous judgment regarding the Jews.
“Every French citizen should be aware,” one writer penned, “that since the Jews were in such high number in the previous government, and as such were directly responsible for this country’s supplies, it is their poor planning that has caused the gross shortages we face today. And can we be completely certain that they, in the greed for which they are so well known, did not stockpile food and clothing for themselves in order to create such an atmosphere of want?”
Another wrote: “Why should we, the citizens of France, be responsible for the dirty Jews of other countries? They flocked here like noisy geese and now we must give them food and shelter, already in such short demand. We are taking bread out of our children’s mouths to feed theirs.”
These words disgusted Virginia, and they terrified the de la Tours. Hatred against Jews was growing, even in Cahors. Claire persuaded her parents to move to a farm in the country owned by her father’s cousin. Meanwhile, Virginia had learned via the grapevine that the war-wounded were still being transported toward Paris and that experienced drivers were in great demand. The Services Sanitaires was now under the auspices of the German government and Nazis now provided fuel for ambulances. Virginia applied and was rehired as an ambulance driver.
Virginia and the de la Tours left Cahors the same day, headed in opposite directions. The de la Tours went southeast toward Carcassone while Virginia took a northern route. She hitched a series of rides in the medical transports up to a base in Valengay, a town 134 miles south of Paris. Although she no longer had to pick up wounded from the battlefield, and the constant din from the bombing was absent, the job was familiar: help load the wounded at the field hospitals into her ambulance and transport them to permanent health care facilities.
Shortly after arrival, Virginia heard disturbing rumors. More and more Frenchmen were being drafted to work in German factories, replacing former workers now wearing Nazi uniforms. Virginia realized that as soon as the men she was transporting were able, they would be packed off to turn out more Nazi war materials, which would in turn cause more men to be wounded in other countries. The seemingly never-ending cycle was maddening to Virginia, but it also served as the impetus of a plan. There had to be groups organizing somewhere to eradicate the Nazi stranglehold on Europe and she was determined to find them.
By the time her ambulance work was completed at the end of August, Virginia had decided that Great Britain would be the best place to launch some kind of work against the Nazi regime. As the United States was not involved in the European conflict, Americans were still free to leave France. Virginia’s exit strategy was to take a train from Paris to the border town of Irun, Spain, and then take a ship to London. Spain was neutral and not engaged in any military action against the Nazis. Virginia had heard, however, that it had become quite a destination for the throngs fleeing France.
Prior to boarding her train, Virginia queued up to present her papers to the German guards at the station. The emblem on her American passport was visible to all who stood nearby, and of particular interest to a man who later sat down next to her in the second-class compartment. The compartment’s other occupants were a young mother and her four children.
Minutes after the train pulled out of the station, the man congenially started up a conversation with Virginia in English, wanting to know if she was heading back home. His forwardness startled her. Her former friendly nature had given rise to caution with strangers in light of the sudden political changes in France. She studied this pleasant-looking man warily and told him simply that she was going to London. The man was undaunted by her chilly reception. He introduced himself as George Bellows and told Virginia he lived in Spain and had been in France checking on some friends. Having seen that they were doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances, he was now returning to Spain. He chatted amiably about the beauty of the French countryside and how difficult life had become for most of the people.
Virginia decided Bellows was British, at least his accent was British. She relaxed gradually. He appeared to really love France and its citizens. His descriptions of happier times spent with friends sounded familiar to Virginia. His sympathies seemed genuine. They shared the same feelings that all the Nazis stood for was fundamentally wrong and that the Nazis’ actions were nothing short of sadistic.
Bellows went on to tell her a story that had unfolded at a Renault automobile factory near Paris that was now being used to manufacture Nazi war materials. The workers had complained to their new bosses that their working conditions were simply insupportable. The Germans suggested that perhaps they would like to form a delegation to discuss the problem further. When the delegation presented itself, the Germans lined them up against a factory wall and shot them all. It was a horrific mental image.
The longer they talked the more candid both of them became about their feelings for the Nazis and the war they were waging against Europe. By the time the four-hundred-mile train trip was coming to an end, Virginia was encouraged: surely there would be other Brits who felt the same way Bellows did.
Bellows took out paper and pen and told her he had some great chums in London she should look up. He wrote down their names and numbers, and then suggested it would be a good idea for her to drop by the American Embassy when she got to London, just to let them know she was there.
The train came to a noisy halt at Hendaye on the French side of the border with Spain. Porters, moving through the aisle, told passengers to collect their belongings and prepare to cross the border on foot.
After she had descended, it occurred to Virginia that Bellows’s British citizenship might be a problem for him. She turned to speak to him only to find they had become separated in the throngs crowding the platform. She moved along with them and when it was her turn, handed her passport to the Nazi guard standing smartly in front of her. He thumbed through it, looking carefully at each page. He studied the picture and then looked hard at her face. Without a word, he shoved the passport back at her, which Virginia took as the sign he was satisfied she was legitimate.
Virginia’s first impression of the Irun train station was that it was noisy, dirty, and the perfect place to remind those who passed through that there was a new world order. Hanging on the walls were enormous canvas portraits of Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini.
Suddenly Bellows reappeared beside her as if he’d been there all along. He suggested she stay at the Hotel del Norte and invited her to join him for dinner with some friends. Virginia accepted both the recommendation and the invitation. Later that evening, she found the three men and three women, two Brits and the rest Spanish, as engaging as Bellows had been. It was almost midnight by the time they parted.
Virginia left Spain at 11:30 the next morning. When she arrived in London two days later, it was with a mixture of emotions. It had been years since she had spent any time in an English-speaking country. Hearing the language being used all around her was odd. And it seemed as though everyone was in a great hurry.
She took a day to settle into a room at Mrs. Tipton’s Boarding House in Westminster and then presented herself at the American Embassy at 1 Grosvenor Square as Bellows had recommended. But she never expected the near celebrity status she received. Once word spread through the embassy that she had spent so much time in France and been close to the fighting, she was whisked into a conference room where a group of diplomats streamed in bombarding her with questions. “What is the situation in occupied France?” “What is the reaction of the French to their occupiers?” “What did you observe during the course of your journey out of France?” They reminded her of pigeons flapping at tossed bread crumbs. Had the occasion not been so serious, their frenzy might almost have been comical.
Virginia told them that all of France, occupied or not, was facing an enormous food shortage, as most of
it was being diverted to the German army. It was worse in unoccupied France, she explained, and catastrophic in the eastern regions like Alsace.
There was a strict curfew in Paris, she continued. Everyone found on the streets after 7:00 PM was arrested, and provided nothing could be found to hold these people further, they were released the following morning at 7:00 AM. Only a single industry continued to thrive: prostitution. Virginia paused here with the briefest of smiles, causing several in her audience to blush. She explained that the prostitutes now had a whole new clientele in the Germans.
Asked how the French felt about the Germans, she responded that her observation was that the Germans were attempting to ingratiate themselves with French society, thus far with only marginal success. Her opinion was that a good many of the French were ready to revolt, particularly those in what was called the “nono”—the unoccupied zone.
Virginia’s debriefing lasted about an hour, after which she was offered a position in the office of the embassy’s military attaché. While another embassy job wasn’t exactly what Virginia had planned on, being an underclerk meant a paycheck of $1,260 a year; more than enough for a single woman living in London in September 1940. And being close to governmental affairs might give her a better chance at finding the anti-Nazi work she was really interested in.
The British had been preparing for war since 1937 when the Royal Air Force buildup began. In 1939, a nationwide blackout was imposed and plans were made for the evacuation of cities presumed to be primary targets. Once France fell, thousands of British citizens were evacuated, primarily children. Thinking they were embarking on a grand holiday, the children saw their train trip to the southwest of England and Wales as a lark. They were sorely disappointed when they learned that schools awaited them at their destinations in an effort to give them as normal an existence as possible.
The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy Page 6
