by Alex Kershaw
In his spare time Phillip still went hunting and fishing, losing himself in nature and the quest for game. As the years passed and he gained promotion, he could afford to travel the world in search of ever bigger trophies, several of which hang to this day in a home he built himself on the site of the house his parents once owned beside the lake in Enghien. The hobby that had begun as a child, bagging an owl with a 9mm rifle his father had given him, ended with him on a grand safari in Africa, tracking rhinoceros and water buffalo, aping the “great white hunters” he’d read about as a boy at 11, Avenue Foch.
In the early 1950s, Phillip married a caring young Swiss woman, Suzie, to his Swiss mother’s great delight, and went on to have three children, one of whom chose in her late twenties to make her life in America. As a grown man, he looked very much like his father, who had been posthumously awarded France’s highest award for valor. Phillip remained extraordinarily close to his mother, Toquette, to the day she died at the American Hospital in 1968. Like her husband, she had served both France and America with great distinction in two world wars.
In late 2013, Phillip Jackson was reunited for the first time since before the war with Francis Deloche de Noyelle, the man who had recruited his mother to the resistance in 1943. De Noyelle, aged ninety-four, visited Phillip at the Hôpital des Invalides, where Phillip had lived following a serious accident in the late 1990s. After the war, Deloche de Noyelle had gone on to enjoy a distinguished career as a diplomat, and in a truly extraordinary chapter had become a member of the French mountaineering team that first conquered Annapurna in 1950, then the highest peak, at 26,200 feet, ever reached by mankind. He had braved the Gestapo and frostbite high in the Himalaya. But even after seventy years Deloche de Noyelle had not come to terms with the death of Sumner Jackson, his former neighbor on Avenue Foch. He still felt responsible. He had, after all, asked Toquette to join the resistance.
Deloche de Noyelle had never been able to face Toquette after the war, so great was his guilt. His father had, however, made sure to visit Toquette to commiserate with her. Toquette had told Deloche de Noyelle’s father she had no regrets whatsoever: “Je ne regrette rien.”
In 2013, when Francis Deloche de Noyelle met with Phillip at Les Invalides, he was reassured to hear Phillip tell him he should not feel a moment’s more anguish. Had Deloche de Noyelle not asked for his mother’s help, neither she nor Phillip nor Sumner would have been able to hold their heads high, knowing they had played their part in defeating Hitler.
Decorated with the Légion d’Honneur and Croix de Guerre, in 2014 Phillip Jackson still treasured photograph albums telling the story of his and his parents’ lives on Avenue Foch before and during the war. He kept them beside a bronze bust of his father in his room at L’Hôpital des Invalides, a stone’s throw from Napoleon’s tomb in central Paris. He counted himself extraordinarily fortunate to have survived at the hands of the Gestapo and a year in Neuengamme, the sinking of the Thielbek, a serious head injury in his seventies, and in recent years aggressive skin cancer. “My life is a story with a happy ending,” he stressed.
Phillip Jackson spends his final days surrounded by other highly esteemed heroes and heroines of the French resistance, within easy walking distance of Avenue Foch. He is, however, the only one among this extraordinary cadre who can trace his roots to the north woods of Maine, who is fiercely proud of his American heritage, and is often moved to tears when he recalls his exceptionally brave and humane parents, who did the right thing at a time when so many in France opted to collaborate rather than fight.
Dr. Sumner Jackson, left, serving as a combat surgeon in World War I. Massachusetts General Hospital archives
Dr. Sumner Jackson, seated facing camera, operating in the American Red Cross hospital of Paris in 1917. Massachusetts General Hospital archives
Toquette and Sumner Jackson, Paris, 1920s. Phillip Jackson via John Snowdon
Sumner, Phillip, and Toquette Jackson, Normandy, 1930s. Phillip Jackson via John Snowdon
Phillip Jackson with maid Louise Heile, 1930s. Phillip Jackson via John Snowdon
Sumner Jackson cutting wood with Phillip, winter 1939–40. Phillip Jackson via John Snowdon
The Jackson country home in Enghien-les-Bains. Phillip Jackson via John Snowdon
General Aldebert de Chambrun and wife, Clara, 1936. Author’s collection
René de Chambrun and wife, Josée, 1930s. Author’s collection
Gestapo officer Helmut Knochen, based at 72 Avenue Foch, 1940–44. Bundesarchiv
OSS spy Donald Coster. Mudd Manuscript Library
Otto Abetz, the Nazi German ambassador to Vichy France, 1940–44. Bundesarchiv
Bomb damage at Saint-Nazaire train station, photographed secretly by Phillip Jackson, summer 1943. Phillip Jackson via John Snowdon
Women inmates at Ravensbruck concentration camp. Bundesarchiv
Toquette Jackson arriving in Malmö, April 1945. Loraine Riemer
The Cap Arcona, sunk by the RAF, Lubeck Bay, May 1945; photographed by Phillip Jackson. Phillip Jackson via John Snowdon
Phillip Jackson on motorbike, Germany, summer 1945. January 2013. John Snowdon
Phillip Jackson, right, while testifying in Hamburg at the war crimes trial, 1946. Phillip Jackson via John Snowdon
SS General Karl Oberg, left, and Helmut Knochen, on trial in Paris, 1954. Bundesarchiv
“She didn’t hesitate for a second.” Francis Deloche de Noyelle, Goélette agent who recruited Toquette Jackson to the resistance, photographed in Paris seventy years later, December 2013. John Snowdon
Phillip Jackson at Les Invalides, January 2013. John Snowdon
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK COULD not have been written without the help of Phillip Jackson, who endured hours of interviews over the telephone and in person in Paris over several years. I will be forever indebted to him. He also allowed me to use many of his extraordinary photographs.
His daughter, Loraine Riemer, was extremely helpful and generous with her time and provided crucial family letters and other primary sources.
I am also indebted to Joe Manos and his family, Francis Deloche de Noyelle, the late Fritz Molden, a truly great Austrian, and his wife Hanna, Suzie Jackson, and Alain Sollier. Amy Squiers spent weeks transcribing interviews with Phillip Jackson and others. Ben Faller helped with picture research. John Snowdon took beautiful portraits yet again—an author could not hope to have a better colleague and friend.
The staffs of the following institutions helped me navigate a vast maze of archive material: the Massachussetts General Hospital, the American Hospital of Paris, the UK National Archives, US National Archives, the Bundesarchiv, the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, and the Château de Vincennes military archives where extraordinary assistance was provided in tracking down elusive resistance records.
It has been a pleasure to work yet again with the hugely professional team at Crown, in particular Claire Potter and my editor, Kevin Doughten. My agent, Jim Hornfischer, also showed great faith in this project from the very start.
My wife, Robin, who came up with the title and was critical in so many other ways, and my son, Felix, were both, as always, supportive beyond belief.
NOTES
PART ONE: CITY OF DARKNESS
“What Nazism, epitomized by”: Jacques Delarue, The Gestapo (Barnsley, UK: Frontline Books, 2008), 353.
1: THE FALL
repair shattered young bodies: In 1916, before the United States entered the First World War, he had volunteered for Britain’s Royal Medical Corps, arriving in France with other Americans who defied President Woodrow Wilson’s 1914 call for neutrality. Sumner had survived the U-boat menace in crossing the Atlantic, and in fact the ship he crossed on was later sunk by a U-boat. When the United States entered the war, Jackson switched to the U.S. Army Medical Corps and went to work in Red Cross Hospital Number 2 on the Rue Piccini in Paris, serving under Dr. Joseph A. Blake, who was a pioneer in techniques to reconstruct badly
injured faces through surgery.
He was assigned to: Many men were missing limbs and others needed amputations, which Sumner soon became an expert in. His work was extremely exhausting and dangerous, and he often labored through the night in hellish conditions while tens of thousands more men each week became casualties. For further reading on Jackson’s early career see Hal Vaughan’s Doctor to the Resistance, 1–28, and Charles Glass’s Americans in Paris, 67–72.
Sumner had operated: Dr. Maurice B. Sanders, “The Mission of Dr. Sumner Jackson,” News of the Massachusetts General Hospital, June–July 1965.
Sumner had seen the rise: Phillip Jackson, interview with author.
Sumner could not believe: Ibid.
“It’s me or America”: Ibid.
He was in fact: Ibid.
“The first time I kissed”: Ibid.
the previous September: Ibid.
Sumner had thought it best: Charles Glass, Americans in Paris, 74.
Terribly afraid, the volunteer: Donald Coster, “Behind German Lines,” in Reader’s Digest, November 3, 1940.
It was quiet once more: Ibid.
The German looked as if: Ibid.
20mm barrels pointing skyward: Ibid.
“Nothing invented by man”: Donald Coster, “Behind German Lines,” Reader’s Digest.
aimed it at his stomach: Ibid.
“We never see any of you”: Ibid.
2: TO SAVE FRANCE
from Allied soldiers’ skulls: Paul Richey, Fighter Pilot, (London: Cassell, 2004), 128.
with the badly wounded: According to Clemence Bock: “I can see him now at the American Hospital in a long surgical coat that reached his ankles. He invariably wore a white shirt with a tiepin joining an oxford collar—always Mr. Correct. But with a terrible temper. His patients feared and loved him. He was often intimidating, but he was mostly gentle, well read, and forever telling interesting stories about America and the Great War….I do know that he treated Ernest Hemingway and his wife, all the bankers at Morgan, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald….When he was elected to the hospital medical board, one of his fellow physicians, a sculptor, had him pose for a bust of Hippocrates. The bronze statue is still at the house on the lake.” Clemence Bock, unpublished memoir.
Germans captured the hospital: Ibid.
Then, on June 1, 1940, the: Records of the American Hospital of Paris.
might collapse without him: Charles Glass, Americans in Paris, 74.
“I’m glad we painted out”: Paul Richey, Fighter Pilot, 146.
“a well-calculated psychological”: Ibid., 147. Also that day the last of 120,000 French and Belgian troops were evacuated to England.
The Huns seemed to be: Ibid.
A couple of days later, a young: Charles Glass, Americans in Paris, 73.
Médaille Militaire onto his son’s: Ibid.
“He was the eternal playboy”: Bove, A Paris Surgeon’s Story, 221.
Any other outcome was: Phillip Jackson, interview with author.
He got dressed and later: Ibid.
Finally, Toquette pulled up: Ibid.
brook eel and whitefish: Ibid.
No one wanted to be caught: David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981), 6.
The French writer and aviator: Ian Ousby, Occupation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 43.
As recently as May 24: Hanna Diamond, Fleeing Hitler: France 1940 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 8.
their windows shuttered: Jean-Marc de Foville, L’Entrée des Allemands à Paris, 14 Juin 1940 (Paris: Calman-Levy, 1965), 57.
at the Chase Bank: UK National Archives, KV2/2745.
Sumner was far from inclined: Charles Glass, Americans in Paris, 13.
In a few quarters, the only: Paul Richey, Fighter Pilot, 147.
3: THE FOURTEENTH
Nous vaincrons parce: Richard Collier, 1940: The Avalanche (New York: Dial Press, 1979), 132.
in the summer breezes: Ibid.
Meanwhile, less than a mile: Adam Nossiter, The Algeria Hotel (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 3.
The previous day de Martel: Ibid.
The doctor went into the reception: Charles Bove, A Paris Surgeon’s Story, 269.
“Everything is dead”: Ibid., 270.
and wet from the rain: David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 43.
five feet ten inches tall: UK National Archives, KV2/2745.
made him always look: Ibid. He was a protégé of Heydrich—the most brilliant yet also feared Nazi in the Third Reich.
He himself had studied: UK National Archives, KV2/2745.
so many millions of Germans: http://livreblanc.maurice-papon.net/interv-knochen.
As SS-Obergruppenführer: Chris McNab, Hitler’s Elite (London: Osprey Publishing, 2013), 156.
One Two Two: The brothel would be a firm favorite with Knochen’s men and his colleagues in the SS. The boîte’s owner, Fabienne Jamet, loved the most fanatical Nazis’ gray uniforms and their gifts of flowers and champagne for her best girls. She would later insist the German occupation was the best chapter in a long life as a Parisian hostess par excellence. The first German officers to arrive in the city looked more like excited tourists, not brutish Goths, and according to one report were “handsome boys, decent, helpful…above all correct.” Typically, Jamet’s girls would be examined three times a week for infection. Cleanliness mattered a great deal to the Germans, who were understandably strict. Sleeping with the enemy while infected was, after all, a particularly reprehensible form of sabotage.
enemies of the Reich: Jacques Delarue, The Gestapo, 202.
dressed in an SS uniform: National Archives UK, KV2/1668.
would be running affairs: Ibid.
“demonstrations will be allowed”: Gilles Perrault and Pierre Azema, Paris Under the Occupation (New York: Vendome Press, 1989), 63.
At some point that day: Charles Bove, A Paris Surgeon’s Story, 223.
Among the last words he: Adam Nossiter, Algeria Hotel, 3.
He had made certain: Charles Bove, A Paris Surgeon’s Story, 223.
Sumner and his colleagues: Ibid.
4: DAY TRIPPERS
“Is the last word said?”: www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/apr/29/greatspeeches1.
Finally, de Gaulle exhorted: www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/apr/29/greatspeeches1.
Hitler’s convoy circled the Arc: Graham Robb. Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris (New York: Norton, 2010), 253.
It was Marshal Foch: Shrabani Basu, Spy Princess (New Lebanon, NY: Omega Publications, 2007), 155.
“It is an armistice”: Michael Carver, The War Lords (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1976), 123.
south, toward the Seine: www.hitlerpages.com/pagina96a.html
“why should we destroy it?”: Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), 170–73.
5: SPIES OF SUMMER
“She saw them fight”: George Kennan, Sketches from a Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 70.
“uncharitable to travelers as a desert”: Ibid.
listeners at German headquarters: Donald Coster, “Behind the German Lines,” Reader’s Digest, November 1940.
If he helped Coster: Charles Glass, Americans in Paris, 75.
to catch eel and trout: Phillip Jackson, interview with author.
Seine for pocket money: Ibid.
Toquette’s sister, Tat, kept: Alice Barrelet, diary, August 12, 1940.
“bullshit bureaucracy of old men”: Clemence Bock, unpublished memoir.
“America and the Great War”: Ibid.
“too much praise cannot be”: Charles Glass, Americans in Paris, 82.
a week after his arrival: Ibid., 136–37.
Operation Torch, the Allies’ successful invasion: National Archives, US, OSS Personnel File, 1593270.
diplomats like Kennan: Do
nald Coster interview with Kathleen Keating: “The American Hospital in Paris During the German Occupation,” May 19, 1981, 6. American Hospital of Paris Archives.
“ready to sail for New York”: Donald Coster, “Behind the German Lines.”
due to rampant prostitution: There was an infestation of rats because the Germans produced so much garbage and at first did not dispose of it efficiently.
6: WINGED VICTORY
don their uniforms: National Archives UK, KV2/1668.
power to make arrests: Jacques Delarue, The Gestapo, 202.
a mile from Avenue Foch: www.livresdeguerre.net/forum/contribution.php?index=50284.
ever the nation’s savior: It was none other than Pétain, who had put an end to mutinies in 1917 during the Chemin des Dames offensive, whose many casualties Dr. Sumner Jackson had treated.
“beginning to take ground”: Allan Mitchell, Nazi Paris (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 19.
Hitler’s mountain retreat: Gilles Perrault and Pierre Azema, Paris Under the Occupation, 13.
“in the occupied zone”: Thomas J. Laub, After the Fall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 65.
receive Wertheimer’s share: Along the Avenue Foch, the changes were notable. The Gestapo had virtually made the area its own, taking over several of the grand villas along Paris’s widest avenue. The military governor had also appropriated a large mansion known as the Palais Rose on Avenue Foch. This grand home, built by the Marquis Boni de Castellane, had belonged to Mrs. Florence Jay Gould. She moved just around the corner from Knochen’s base at number 72, taking up residence at 89, Rue de Malakoff.
