THE excellent weather that had favored the Nazis throughout their campaign continued almost without a break. Skies remained blue and ceilings high for the raiding aviators. Due to the lack of rain rivers were unusually low and it was easy to ford them or throw pontoon bridges across when necessary. Never during the years that I have lived in France have I seen the last part of May and the beginning of June so dry and perfect. Day by day my dislike for brilliant sunshine grew until I positively hated it. Rain, rain---if only we could have more of it. Cloudbursts were what I prayed for, and my prayers went unanswered. The Boches were having all the luck.
Except for being completely blacked out, Montmorency and Enghien, touching one another, were calm when we arrived and life was going on about as usual. Shops were open to a brisk business and one could get an excellent meal in any of the dozens of small restaurants. There were even the usual quota of rowboats floating peacefully about on the smooth surface of the lake, and old men fished tranquilly, catching nothing. It was very warm and terrace cafés along the streets were crowded with thirsty customers. Not many refugees passed this way, and I suppose that explained the lack of nervousness.
There was not much work the day following our arrival in Montmorency. Evidently the Germans were preparing their attack on the Oise River. There was little doubt in my mind that the French would throw everything they had in here and hold on the Oise and the Seine. These rivers form the natural defense of Paris, and when they are crossed the capital is apt to fall.
Part of the Section was quartered in an empty villa, the rest in a lovely garden of roses in full bloom. Again I had a room, but there was no bed and I slept on a stretcher. I laughed to myself for even having thought of a bed. Was I spoiled by my night in Corbeil-Cerf? Was I going soft again so quickly? From my window I could see the Eiffel Tower. Paris! Only seven miles away, and Josette was there. The telephone was still working and I spoke to her. She and Claude were leaving in the morning for Touraine. They were going by car, but could not obtain enough gasoline for love or money. Paris was nearly empty and the remaining civilian population had been advised to leave. Where was I? Impossible to say over the phone, but I would be at her house within the hour.
Hastily I threw some tins of gasoline in the back of my car and set out, asking Willis to take charge of the Section. Had there been work I would not have done this, but as there was none I was determined not to let my friends down when they needed me. After all, I had been slaving day and night for strangers, so now to give aid to friends seemed only natural and correct. At least that was my interpretation of what I should do under the circumstances, and, right or wrong, I frankly did not give a damn. Josette needed me and I went to her.
I found her calm, but in a depressed state of mind. She admitted openly that which I was trying to hide, even to myself, under a flimsy covering of vain hopes. She told me that it was going very badly with the French Army and, although I refused to agree, I knew she was right.
We dined together, and though the food and wine were excellent, there was not that usual charming gaiety we had enjoyed during so many of our little dinners at the Escargot d'Or, the Crillon Grill, and many other Paris restaurants. It was replaced by a melancholy intimacy, born of the common knowledge that France would fall.
The change in Paris since my last trip was tremendous. All happiness was gone from its people, and every face was marked deeply with anxiety. The Ville Lumière was face to face with tragedy, and knew it. No taxis were in the streets, as they had all been requisitioned to transport reserves up to the front, and the only cars one saw, moving slowly through the darkened streets, were loaded with baggage and fleeing people. There were few people about, and the young I couples strolling with their arms about each other, so familiar to the Parisian scene, were absent. The last reservists had been called to the colors.
Claude was at home when we arrived, and I noted in a moment that her usual effervescent charm was gone. She was in a state of high nervous tension that was hard to keep under control. Her husband, an officer in the Maginot Line, had not written for a week. This had never happened before. The news that she would have enough gasoline to reach her mother's home near Tours calmed her only for a moment. Then she went off into such a torrent of hysterical speech that I was afraid to leave Josette alone with her.
Most of the night was spent trying to comfort Claude, and it was three o'clock when exhaustion quieted her and we were able to put her to bed. We had just gotten her under the covers, and were congratulating ourselves, when the air-raid sirens began to shriek full blast. My advice was against going down into the cellar, so the three of us went out onto the terrace to listen for planes. Neither the moon nor stars were visible, and the night air was close and stuffy. There was a strong odor of smoke, yet there was no glow in the sky to indicate a fire. Far off in the direction of Le Bourget, the airport, we heard the sound of motors, but the planes did not come near us. Paris had been declared an open city and I did not think that the Germans would attack it. There were a few dull detonations as bombs crashed in the distance, and a dull rumbling told us that the defense guns were at work.
When the "all clear" signal blew, a curious, eerie dawn was breaking. Already in the street below early birds were filling their cars with luggage and leaving. Five A.M. I noted on my watch. Time to start moving. I intended to return to the Section as soon as possible, feeling that during the day there would be activity. First I must go down to the Crillon Hotel and pay for the room I had taken and not used. Then I would come back, say good-by and be off.
The pall that hung over Paris was so strange that I cannot describe it. The light was only a half-light, obscuring objects a short distance away or giving them an unreal, ghostlike appearance without dimensions. Sounds were muffled, and a heavy blanket of acrid-smelling smoke covered everything,. making people cough constantly. It was difficult to breathe and your handkerchief was black if you used it. My first thought was that the French had thrown some sort of smoke screen over Paris to hide it from the enemy. Later I learned that it came from Rouen, some hundred-odd miles away.
The Allies had set fire to 120,000,000 francs' worth of gasoline stored there to prevent the Germans from seizing it.
Only the passing of an occasional refugee car broke the silence of the streets as I crept along, unable to make speed on account of the thickness of the smoke. I stopped for a moment in front of the Crillon to look out over the beautiful Place de la Concorde. The Chamber of Deputies, across the Seine, was obscured completely, as were Marly's Horses at the foot of the Champs-Élysees. The Obelisk, its base protected against bombs by rows upon rows of sand-bags, stood out vaguely, a part of this unreal world that should be so familiar to me. The female statue representing Strasbourg there to the left caught my attention. She had been twenty-two years out of mourning. I wondered when she would return. (When the city is in German hands the French tie a piece of black crepe on the statue.)
It was not easy saying farewell to Josette. She had meant so much to me, had helped me when I had most been in need of help, and we had been so close in our friendship. Perhaps we were parting for a very long time---Who can tell what queer pranks the fortunes of war will play on the humble individual? Perhaps. . . . Ah, no! I refuse to accept that it was forever, although I have not seen her since. I refuse to give up the only woman I have ever loved as easily as that. Some day, and not too far in the future, I shall march back into France with a conquering army, that of General de Gaulle I hope, and then I shall find her again, eyes sparkling and white teeth showing in a brilliant smile of welcome. I know I shall, and together we will take up the ends of the thread so rudely broken by war and start life again just where we left off, that heartbreaking morning in the Rue du Dobropol.
When I arrived in Montmorency a rumor had spread that Turkey and Russia had declared war against Germany. The effect on the French was extraordinary. It gave them fresh hope. Since the beginning of the war they had received only severe blows, nothing to encourage them. Poland had fallen; Norway, Holland and Denmark were occupied; the Belgian King had invited Allied troops into his country and then capitulated, allowing them to be nearly caught in a trap; the Italians had performed their famous dagger stunt, stabbing France in the back when she was down. Now good news came at last. Perhaps it was the turning point. We tried in every way to check up and find if this were fact or fancy. The rumor had been widely spread, but in the days to come we learned that it was false, and our hopes were cruelly dashed to the ground and smashed.
Not long after I had returned from Paris, Major Martene sent for me. Half of the ambulances would report immediately to the 16th Division, and the other half to the 13th for service. They were urgently needed. There was severe fighting along the banks of the Oise. This service terminated, the Section was to rejoin him at Houdan, to the west of Paris.
Willis and Lieutenant Couture took ten of the cars and left to find the 13th Division, while I led the other half in search of the 16th. I was given the wrong address. The town where I was told I would find them was deserted except for a company of Algerian infantry and their officers. They had been there only a short time and the officers did not know who had preceded them. The men were throwing up a barricade across the road and placing their machine-guns. They seemed in very high spirits, and were most amused at the sight of Americans. Their greeting was friendly, and they continued to chat and joke in their native tongue. I asked one of them, who spoke bad but fluent French, the explanation for so much good humor. "We are tired of retreating," he said, "and now we have decided not to retreat any more. That is all." He pointed to the barricade. "Either we stop the enemy, or we die there with our machine-guns hot. We will not be the only ones to die." This evidently struck him as very funny, and he laughed heartily as he adjusted a machine-gun.
After some difficulty the medical corps of the 16th was located at Bouffemont, where we had passed the night before the last, quartered in the sumptuous château of Baron Empain, a very wealthy Belgian who had been reported lost while serving with the French Army.
Immediately on our arrival two cars were ordered to the first-line dressing station near Ile-Adam. Herbert de Belle and McElwain were on call and I went up with them. German artillery was hammering away fairly heavily from the other side of the Oise, and had killed and wounded a few soldiers in the woods. The young Frenchmen did not seem to know how to take it. They did not understand how easy it was to play safe under this kind of shelling. Instead of scattering, lying flat when they heard a shell coming, or digging in, they stood about in excited groups and talked. They must have been green troops, and showed surprise when a shell took heavy toll instead of possibly wounding one or two men if they had played the game right. The old poilu of 1914-18 would have known what to do. This was his kind of war, and it frankly seemed good to me to get back into it after the 1940 type that I had seen at Amiens and Beauvais. I can honestly say that I felt a kind of homesickness for the last war as I dropped time and again on my belly to avoid flying shell fragments. After the terrible bombings we had been through this was child's play, and you could beat it every time if you knew how. It surprised me a good deal that Mac showed signs of nervousness here, and I told him to pull himself together. He said he had a bad hangover, which I knew was not true. I had seen him take bombing after bombing without batting an eye, but this was something he was not accustomed to and it bothered him. Later he admitted this, at the same time assuring me most earnestly that he would get used to it very quickly.
There were not as many wounded in the woods as we expected, and Mac was starting back with an empty car when a shell dropped near a group of soldiers who were foolishly standing up, and filled the ambulance.
The Colonel in command asked me to dine at the officers' mess, something I never liked to do as I preferred taking pot-luck with my men, but I could not politely refuse. The meal, served on the Baron's finest porcelain, was sumptuous. Hors d'oeuvres from the well-stocked larders, and guinea hen from the farmyard, washed down with wines of the finest vintages, followed by coffee, liqueurs, and champagne. The dining hall was royal in its splendor, and my only regret was that my friends were not with me.
We had just drunk a health in champagne to Franco-American friendship when an orderly entered, clicked his heels, saluted, and presented a dispatch to the Colonel. The young doctor at my right, who evidently appreciated the better things in life and thought very highly of the inner man, groaned. "It was too good to last," he whispered in my car. And he was right. The dispatch was an order to retreat immediately.
Here I was again caught with cars out. It would never do to have them return in the night and find me gone. The Colonel agreed that I should wait, and suggested that I should keep an ambulance with me in case any more wounded came in. He also told me to take anything I wanted from the excellent wine cellars, as the enemy would have them soon. This last suggestion which sounded so pleasant was bad news indeed. Either the Germans had already crossed the Oise, or he thought they would very soon. My personal guess was that they had not crossed as yet. I based this on the heavy artillery fire about us, which was entirely French, my theory being that it was concentrated on the bridgeheads on the other side.
Before leaving, the Colonel ordered all the animals, except the dangerous ones, set free so that they could forage for themselves. There was a regular menagerie out back of the stables, and only the bears were left behind bars. It would not do to let them roam about the country as long as it was not certain that all civilians were evacuated.
I tried to adopt a young llama, but the little fellow struggled so fiercely that I was forced to let him go. He bounded off into the darkness and I do not know what happened to him. My luck with a green parrot that I caught in a wire fence was equally bad. I tried to teach him to say, "Go to hell, Hill," the name of my boss in Paris, and his only response was to bite me, so I put him on the branch of a tree, myself saying, "Go to hell, parrot," and let my animal-training instincts stop at that. I did not even go near the bears, fearing a real catastrophe.
Herbert de Belle stayed with me, and the château was a weird and lonesome place with only the two of us left in it. Outside there were the wild animals; inside, the walls were decorated with countless mounted heads. Evidently the Baron was a big-game hunter. In one hall he had a full-grown stuffed giraffe, which stared at us with glassy eyes, and many beautiful skins on the floors. Queer, exotic bird-calls and the sound of continued artillery fire were the only noises that broke the oppressing silence of the place.
With nothing to do but wait patiently, Herb and I decided on a non-conducted tour of the château. First, however, we brought his ambulance from its hiding place under the trees and left it in the entrance yard, so that any returning drivers would see it and know that we were there. The staff car was under the great outside stairway. With flickering candles we visited the house from roof to cellar, finally pulling up in the latter place to do a little legal pillaging. Military law permits a soldier to carry away what he wants if it is certain that the place is about to fall into enemy hands, and we were more than certain now. In point of fact we were not so confident that we would not fall along with the château. Only the fact that the French artillery kept banging away outside bucked us up and gave us hope.
For several hours we rummaged in the cellars, selecting the finest wines and champagnes from a very choice collection. Once I heard my companion swearing violently and complaining. He had found a bin over which was inscribed the name and year of his favorite Château Yquem, and the bin was empty. He cursed the French soldiers that had been there first, and called them a lot of dirty thieves. When I laughed at this he looked up annoyed. "But, damn it all," he said. "With all the other stuff here why should they take the best?" We were quite hard on the magnums of Veuve Cliquot, 1923, turning our noses up at a younger Pommery & Greno. And yet after the staff car was loaded down little or no impression had been made on the bins. Evidently the Baron was a wine connoisseur as well as a big-game hunter.
For a while we sat in the huge salon, stared at by the dead eyes of mounted animals, and sipping champagne, until our heads began to nod with sleep. Herb lay down on a moderate-sized divan and I chose one of royal proportions. It must have been fully twelve feet long and six deep, and I wondered what the Baron used it for in ordinary times. With so many fur rugs about it was unnecessary to unroll my blankets. Besides, we might have to leave in a hurry and I did not wish to lose them. So I pulled a zebra skin over my fully clothed body and slept until dawn, which was not long in coming.
When I awoke I was startled by the dead silence. Not a sound, no birds, no artillery, nothing. As long as the cannon were banging away I had felt relatively safe. Now they must have joined the retreat, leaving the river crossing unopposed. I shook de Belle. "Let's buzz off," I said. "The other cars must have gone on to Houdan, or they'd be back by now, and I don't like this peaceful and quiet countryside." He was on his feet in a second, throwing to the ground the polar bear skin he had chosen as a blanket. "Does smell suspicious, doesn't it?"
In the courtyard we had a shock. The spot where we had left de Belle's ambulance was empty. A few stragglers went by in retreat along the road outside and we tried to learn what regiments had passed between three and five-thirty in the morning. The car had been there at three. I had made a final tour of inspection then and had seen it.
While we stood debating on what was the best plan to follow, a dainty, mouselike, little old lady came in and asked where the French officers who were there the day before had gone. She and her two invalid sisters were waiting up the hill. They had been promised transportation, but the officers must have forgotten. Would I be so kind? Really, they could not stay there alone with the Germans. It was too, too awful. I told her to go back and wait. We would not forget them. This was bad news, because it meant that I must jettison most of our fine wines to make room for them in the staff car, if we did not succeed in locating the missing ambulance. However, we would do it, of course. The old lady went off smiling.
Perhaps it was our good intentions, even at the cost of our wine, that brought us luck. Two very sheepish-looking young officers of the colonial infantry drove in with the car a moment after our mouselike friend had disappeared around the corner. They had thought the ambulance abandoned, one of them said, and then contradicted himself by admitting that they had had a stroke of guilty conscience and decided to bring the car back when they saw it belonged to the Field Service. They knew of the splendid work we were doing, and asked me to pardon them, which I did, not caring a damn as long as I had the ambulance back. Also this saved the wine.
Herbert was leading with his cargo of old ladies when we arrived at the outskirts of Montmorency. He missed the road and we stopped to back up. Just as I threw my gears into reverse the most terrible explosion I have ever heard went off not a hundred yards behind us. The concussion pressed in against my head until I thought it would be crushed; my ears rang and I was momentarily deaf. De Belle's car ahead of me shook violently, and debris began falling all about us. Herb looked out from the driver's seat and I signalled full speed ahead. I did not know what had happened, but I did know that this was a good place to leave as fast as possible. There might be other explosions, and had we not passed when we did, this one would surely have finished us.
At Enghien we found the medical staff from Bouffemont installed in the town hall. The Colonel said that none of our cars had reported there, so I felt sure they had gone on to Houdan. He asked us to wait for a load of wounded that we could drop at the Foch Hospital, which was on our route. One of the wounded, he told us, was on the Oise when the Germans took the bridgeheads. He had been saved in a motorcycle sidecar while they were coming across. They had arrived at the bridge disguised as peasant refugees. When they got to the bridgehead they drew guns and shot the guards before there was time to blow up the bridge. Certainly they were not far away now, and Paris would surely fall.
Two badly cut civilians came in while we were waiting. They had been near the explosion we had heard a few minutes before. It was the gunpowder depot in the old fort that had been set off. At least the Boche would not get it.
The town of Enghien, so peaceful and animated when we arrived from Corbeil-Cerf three days before, was now completely deserted. Cafés where we had enjoyed refreshing drinks were boarded up, as were all the other shops and houses. From a gay little town on the side of a smiling lake, it had been turned almost overnight into a sad, mournful place. The stroke of a sorcerer's wand had done it, and the sorcerer was Adolf Hitler.
The wounded were loaded and once again we took the road.
PARIS by now was almost completely emptied of human beings. No automobiles rolled up and down the great boulevards where once the traffic was so thick that driving was difficult. No taxis, no green autobuses, only now and then a rare touring car hurrying on its way with belated refugees. The municipal police had received orders to stay, and stood at their posts or walked their beats in silence.
De Belle and I lost no time crossing the town, deposited our wounded at the Foch Hospital, and continued on to Houdan. I had figured that we were being sent there to carry the blessés of the army that was defending the Seine, but when we arrived we found Quigley waiting with the gasoline truck, and he informed us that the Germans had already crossed the river on pontoon bridges. He had been left to tell us that the Section had gone on to Rambouillet, where we were to join it. All of the cars that had been with me at Bouffemont were accounted for now that de Belle had come in, but four drivers from the half of the Section that had been with the 13th Division were missing.
I sent de Belle on to join the Section, giving him two magnums of champagne for the boys, with my compliments. Quigley would wait for me at Houdan, unless he received definite word that the Germans were coming. I also left a magnum of champagne with him to keep him company, and returned to Paris, hoping that I might locate one or more of the lost drivers. At least I could leave word at several places where they might pass not to return to Houdan because of the danger, but to go straight to Rambouillet. I did not want Quigley to be captured. Not only was he an excellent man and a good driver, but also he had the gasoline supply, most necessary to keep the Section on a working basis. So I let the car out, covering the seventy-five miles to Paris and back, including two stops to leave instructions, in an hour and a half. This was over crowded roads, for the pedestrian refugees, carrying their possessions in their hands and on their backs, had not travelled far from the capital.
None of the four drivers had been seen either by the guardian at our office in the Champs-Élysées or by courageous little Albertson, who was sticking it out with his family in United States House at the Cité Universitaire where we had lived before going to the front. After leaving messages at both places I headed full tilt for Houdan. As I passed through the Bois de Boulogne I noticed clouds of smoke beginning to rise in the northwest not far distant. Soon the smoke would black out the sun and spread over Paris. I made a hurried stop to ask a policeman what it was, and he told me that soldiers had set fire to the gasoline depots in Neuilly. This is a suburb, really a part of the capital, so I knew they must be expecting the Germans at any moment. They marched into the city at break of day next morning.
At least a hundred times on my return to Houdan soldiers and civilians tried to stop me for a ride, but I did not slow down my pace. Quigley's safety and that of my Section depended on my arriving in Houdan before the Germans, and this was the all-important question from my point of view. Each officer should hold himself responsible for the safety of his men, and that should come first. If we lost the precious gasoline the Section risked being stuck and captured. From now on gasoline became a major problem in our lives. It was as important to us as our very lifeblood.
Quigley was still there, his broad face calm and unconcerned, although he had been bombed once during my absence. However, there was not much left in the champagne bottle I had left with him. Two British tank corps men had joined him. Their tank had broken down as the Germans approached, and they had kept to the fields, watching the enemy roll along the roads. In the night they had stolen a boat and traversed the Seine under a crossfire from the Germans and the French. Now they were in Houdan and did not know what to do next. They spoke no French and had no funds, so Karl Quigley took them under his care.
I was in a house occupied by French military police, studying the map to find the shortest route for Rambouillet, when Karl rushed in, white and breathless, shouting, "Here they come down the road." He kept on going through the house, followed closely by his newly adopted Englishmen. Naturally I supposed that we were trapped by at least a Panzer regiment, and was about to follow when my curiosity got the best of me and I ran to the front door for a quick look. Three planes were flying low, actually following the road, and I could see by their markings that they were English. This relieved my mind so much that when I finally persuaded Quigley to return I forgot to give him hell.
We found the shortest road on the map and were about to leave when a woman came up to me. She was a refugee from Paris, and her four-year-old daughter was waiting for her on a near-by farm. Would we take them with us? Anywhere, just to get away from the Boche. "Oh, please, Monsieur. For my little girl's sake." And so I inherited a refugee mother, daughter, and the family cat. Ordinarily I was against this sort of thing. It hampered the efficiency of our work, but I could not leave her here in this deserted town, which would be taken at any moment. Even the military police were closing up shop and leaving. The woman in her terror forgot where she had left the child, and we were some time locating it. Her baggage filled up the back of the car entirely; so the three of us, plus cat, sat in front. I asked how she had come so far from Paris with all this luggage, and she told me that they had travelled with peasants in an open wagon, but the horse had gone lame and the peasants were remaining on a farm near Houdan. And so, with my happy little family, plus the two Englishmen, we headed for Rambouillet.
Some distance away from Rambouillet we could see and hear that the town where the Presidents of France had their summer home was under a violent bombing, and I signalled Quigley to slow down. The planes were plainly seen circling around, and the sound of frequent explosions reached our ears. We were still well outside when we came upon a truck burning on the roadside, and from it came loud reports like shellfire. It was an ammunition truck upon which an aviator had made a direct hit. Keeping on the far side of a tree I approached it on foot and could see the driver and his assistant, carbonized beyond recognition, sitting upright in the seat.
It would have been foolish to risk passing this truck with our load of gasoline as long as it kept pot-shotting on all sides, and besides the Germans were still bombing the town, often passing out where we were. The forest, which came down to the road, made as good cover as any; so we stopped there, driving the cars into a sheltered lane. I ordered my friends to keep at a safe distance from the gas truck in case it was hit. From my own point of view I am happier in a forest during a raid than any other place. You are hidden from above, there is not the danger of falling walls, and while you may be killed or wounded there is not that horrible risk, the most terrible of all in my mind, of being buried alive in a cellar. During my month of war, in which I was on the receiving end of about everything the Germans had to offer, I was in a bomb shelter once, and this was the worst moment I passed, although the planes dropped nothing, because I did not know what was going on outside and feared being buried.
From the depths of the forest, puffing and sweating, arrived a fat, red-faced figure in the uniform of a French soldier, and I recognized Lieutenant Couture's chauffeur. In one breath he was calling on the saints to save him, in the next he was cursing the Lieutenant for having left him in such a dreadful place alone. "Bonne mere de Dieu! Good mother of God!---Dirty pig of a lieutenant to leave me here. Merde, alors!" I laughed at his unbounded fear, and he turned on me more furious than ever. But he was a coward, the rare type of Frenchman that I did not like, and he was easily made to remember his place.
Couture had left the fellow there to tell us to wait. He had gone to see some general and had been away for hours. The chauffeur, Klein, thought we had better go and look for him. But it was not the Lieutenant's safety that was on his mind, it was his own. He did not like the forest. The whereabouts of the Section were unknown to him.
When the planes had gone away and I thought we could safely pass the burning truck, I asked every one except Quigley to walk to the far side of it where we would pick them up. Once in the town, which had received a terrific beating and was filled with troops and half-crazed refugees, Klein decided that leaving the forest had been a mistake and that we should return. He stopped me to say this at the most dangerous spot possible, in the middle of important crossroads where troops were passing. I am neither more courageous nor more cowardly than another, but I avoid places where I am likely to be killed whenever possible, and the planes might be back at any moment; so I told him to keep moving. He said we ought to go back to the forest. I said he could do what he damned well pleased, but that we were going on to look for the Section. He did go back, and I never saw him again. Couture left Rambouillet without returning for his chauffeur. My private opinion was that they were two of a kind, and my dislike for both would have been intense except for the fact that neither of them interested me.
Rarely, if ever, have I seen chaos as complete and wild as in the town of Rambouillet. Several roads over which refugees were travelling converged there, and there was an important military movement. Add to this the confusion created by the bombing. The traffic jam was beyond control, even had there been some one there to control it. Two hundred yards an hour was good time, made yard by yard. The English Tommys worked hard to clear the way, but their task was hopeless. People were frantic and nerves were at breaking point. It was impossible to get ambulances through to pick up the wounded. The scenes of anguish and suffering that I saw and was unable to cope with were indeed heartbreaking. I could not leave the steering wheel for a moment, as I had to continue to hold my place in this slow-moving line of miserable humanity. If I pulled off on a side road to give succor, I would not be able to get back on the main road again. And then I must follow Quigley and find the Section, must keep directly behind him. What a perfect target for Nazi planes these crowded roads made! I was surprised that more did not come over. They could have reaped a rich harvest.
We got through town and found the roads outside just as bad. There were four lanes of traffic, two going each way, where at best there was only space for three lanes. I saw an officer on the running board of a car that was slowly coming towards us. The squat, badly built figure was familiar, and although his back was turned I had no trouble recognizing Lieutenant Couture. He seemed very glad to see us, and I found out why. It was not because he liked us any more than we liked him, but he had wrecked his car for the second time and wanted the truck to tow him. We spent most of our time getting him out of trouble, and instead of helping he invariably managed to hinder us in everything. This was certainly neither the time nor the place for an accident, and to save my life I did not see how he could have speeded up sufficiently to wreck anything in such traffic. But for that sort of stunt Couture would always find a way. It was his second major accident in two weeks---twice as many as we had had with our twenty-three cars in the same length of time. He was a past-master at being a damn nuisance.
However, he wrote the whereabouts of the Section on a slip of paper for me. They had not stayed here, but had immediately moved on another thirty or forty miles. The fact that this meant that de Belle was lost did not disturb me. He could handle the situation, I knew, and would find us in time. Besides, every one of the drivers had been informed that the headquarters office from Paris was now at Vouvray, and to go there if lost.
We came to a small road which turned off to the south. When the truck had passed, Couture told me that this was the road to take if I wanted to reach the Section. I pulled the car into it and yelled for Quigley to back up and follow me. Too late. A huge armored car had slipped into my place behind Karl and we were definitely separated. The Lieutenant's car was on the main road and he wanted Quigley with him to pull it out. I could have strangled him with joy in my heart for this trick, and probably would have, except that I was carried along in the line of traffic against my will.
And worst of all,, the road was not at all the right one. It circled around and headed back towards Rambouillet. I did not wish to return to the town, for I was sure that if the planes came back there would be a dangerous panic. I could take care of myself, but now there was the added responsibility of my newly acquired family to consider. The gasoline in my tank was getting low with all this slow running, mostly in first speed, and I had not filled it, thinking to remain with Quigley and his supply. There was enough left to get us to the Section provided I did not miss the way and take a long route. And night was coming on fast.
At this point I had a break of luck. A lane, hardly more than a footpath, led into a field on the right. The ground looked hard and I took it. Here at least I would be away from the madness of the road, and could think, study my maps, and examine the situation, which was not brilliant.
First I cut a quantity of branches and camouflaged the car. Then I studied my detailed map of this sector. It would not be difficult to reach the road I wanted if the car could pass through the lane. I walked down it to see if this were possible, and found it blocked with other motorists who were installed there in a small woods for the night. One of them said that they would be leaving at crack of dawn, which suited me, as I did not care to drive at night with so little gasoline in my tank. I would start at that time too, and with luck reach the Section between six and seven o'clock.
My refugee companion had some dry toast and a bar of chocolate, to which I added a bottle of Baron Empain's very finest claret, and we dined in the field as darkness fell. A heavy fog came up, for which I was thankful, and then turned into a light, cold drizzle. I walked up and down the lane, smoking and trying to make heads or tails of life. It just did not seem to add up. There were certainly ten million people, not counting soldiers, on the road that night, and most of them not as lucky as we were. This woman who was with me, and who had left a comfortable apartment in Paris, now counted herself fortunate to have eaten dry toast and chocolate, to have, had a swallow of wine from the bottle, and to be able to allow her child and cat to sleep in her lap while she dozed fitfully sitting upright on the front seat of my car. Topsy-turvy world was the only description that a fatigued, bewildered brain would invent for me. The cold rain penetrated beneath my tunic, and I climbed into the car behind the steering wheel, and joined my two companions and cat, to pass the remaining hours of the night on the front seat.
THE traffic had cleared up somewhat during the night, and I was able to make fair speed along the main highway, coasting downhill whenever I could to conserve gasoline. It was good to be away from the milling, half-crazed mobs of Rambouillet, even though Nazi planes did fly over us several times, strafing with machine-guns, forcing us to stop the car and run for shelter. My companion and her little daughter behaved magnificently under these dangerous and trying conditions, obeying my instructions like soldiers. The child was too young to understand what was happening., and the mother, while thoroughly frightened, managed to hold her chin up and keep smiling. I was very glad that I had not left them at Houdan.
About twenty-five miles from Rambouillet we left the highway and turned off on a charming little country road that was not cluttered with refugees, and ran through a verdant and happy valley. Nor was this road bombed. One could almost forget about the war and all its horrors here. I breathed a sigh of relief, too, when I saw the name of the village I was looking for marked on a signpost, and noted by the gauge that I had twice as much gasoline as was necessary to reach it. Now, if the Section had not received new orders and moved off in the night, we were all right. On we rolled, stopping once or twice to ask villagers if they had seen American ambulances pass that way. No one had, which worried me. This was the road to the village Couture had written down, but instructions were countermanded so often and so rapidly that one could never be sure.
But the Section was there, the cars lined up under a row of trees along the banks of a mill-pond, and the men still sleeping in them. Only Stetson was up, and I found him washing in a basin of steaming water that a farmer's wife had heated for him. He took us to a modest café where coffee, bread and butter tasted like a meal prepared for royalty, and told me what had been happening during my absence. As I knew, the Section had gone to Houdan, then Rambouillet. At both these places they had stopped for only a very short time before receiving orders to proceed. They had arrived here the previous night and could not be better off. It was away from everything, no bombing, very kind people and plenty of food. This sounded promising, for we needed rest badly. They had hauled practically no wounded since coming south of Paris, and had had a tough time getting through the traffic jams. Three or four bombings without a casualty. We checked the ambulances against my list. There were still five missing, plus Quigley and the French Lieutenant. "Hope that damn Frog never shows up," Stet said, voicing my opinion. But he did, unfortunately, shortly afterwards, with the radiator protector and headlights of his car smashed in, and without the gasoline truck. He told me that Quigley had left him on the side of the road to shift for himself, and must be punished most severely. I made a mental note to "punish" him with another magnum of Veuve Cliquot as soon as he came back. He had done his best to lose Couture, and if he had failed it was not his fault.
When I finished coffee I went out to see who was awake, and found most of the men washing and dressing. They had had a good night's sleep and were in excellent spirits. Willis was in the next village, about a mile away, with Martene, so I hurried over to make a report to the Major and say hello to Harold. The latter had a little house for us, and there was a room for my family, which became quite a joke, and I was accused of certain selfish interests which I certainly did not have.
During the day Bartlett, one of the missing drivers, got word to us that he was stuck without gasoline some twenty miles away, and I dispatched an ambulance to bring him in. Quigley and four cars were still on the absent list. The gasoline question as yet was not serious, for each ambulance carried a fairly large reserve supply, but I would have felt happier had Quigley been there, and he would have been if the fool Lieutenant had not dragged him away from me the night before. Damn the fellow's eyes. He really was bad news. Martene could not stand him any more than we could, and on one occasion threatened to have him locked up for eight days. That afternoon he ran into the Major's car and I thought the little fellow, of whom I was so fond, would explode with fury. The vocabulary with which he told Couture what he thought of him was a masterpiece of unrepeated profanity that must have taken him all of his eleven years in the Foreign Legion to perfect. From the bottom of my heart I admired his command of French curse words.
Harold Willis suggested a gala dinner in the local bistrot, and I agreed with enthusiasm, adding that Baron Empain, whom we had not had the pleasure of meeting, would supply his choicest wines and champagnes. Willis went to the restaurant to order the dinner, something very special, and I put five magnums of Cliquot's best in the coldest water I could find. We would have a bangup celebration in our quiet valley.
During the afternoon the first refugees began filing through, then more and more, and I could see the nervous reaction of the local inhabitants. Finally some of their friends from up the valley passed, adding to the excitement. There were wild rumors circulating that the Boches were coming, and when the town crier, a weather-beaten, mothy old fellow with a drum, came out in the public square and announced that Monsieur le Maire was leaving and advised his townspeople to do the same, the sequence that I was now becoming accustomed to happened. It seemed to follow us right along. A happy, normal place where life went on as usual, the arrival of Section One, a few hours of rest and comfort, refugees, rumors, a deserted town. I was getting a little sensitive about it, feeling that we were the carriers of ill fortune. Needless to say, we really had nothing to do with these evacuations. They happened because we were always just one jump ahead of the enemy, and were taking place in thousands of similar towns and villages that did not know of our existence.
We ate our gala dinner sitting on the ground outside the restaurant, which was closed, the family who ran it having been one of the first to get away. And it was not much of a celebration, for we, too, had received our marching orders for eight o'clock that night. Retreat-retreat-retreat-retreat! God! How I began to hate that word. It was getting on my nerves, under my skin.
It seemed to me that a good idea would be to make contact with our headquarters at Vouvray, learn what they were doing, and at the same time give them news of the Section. I mentioned this thought to Willis and he agreed with me. He would take the Section on to its next post, and I would remain where I was, leaving before dawn for Vouvray. In that way I could tell any of the lost drivers, if by chance they came during the night, where to go. This waiting in deserted spots was becoming a second nature with me by now. I would rejoin the Section immediately after I had reported to my boss, Lovering Hill.
That night my refugees and I were the lone survivors in the village. Several inhabitants had come to me early in the evening to ask my advice about leaving. I had advised them to stay, which was not what they wanted me to say, so they had promptly left. Hundreds of motorcycles went through in perfect formation, one after the other, and this raised faint hopes in me that an orderly retreat was in progress, and that the French intended to put up a desperate defense on the far side of the Loire River. This was the country's last natural line of fortifications. After that the way through to the Mediterranean was clear.
Although I left at four o'clock next morning I never got to Vouvray. My refugee mother wanted to be put out in a little town near Chartres. She had friends there, and her son, a boy of seventeen, had promised to meet her at the friends' home. It was some distance out of my way, but she was becoming a problem and slowing up my work, so I was glad to do as she asked in order to be free. Not that she was not the most courageous and considerate of women. It was just that I felt I could travel faster and do my job better alone.
Her friends' home was closed tightly. They had gone, and the son was not there either. The poor woman was desperate. How would she ever find her boy again? This had been agreed upon on leaving Paris as the spot where they would meet. Hundreds of thousands of families were broken up and separated this way, and I am sure that there are still many who have not yet been reunited. What could she do? Where could she go? I did not know, but I could not carry her with me for the rest of the war. I had a very definite duty to perform. She understood this. Would I take her to the station? A refugee train was about to pull out for the South. With the help of several men who were there, I put the mother, child, cat and baggage aboard and waved good-by, wondering what the answer to it all could be.
My intention was to keep to the back roads as much as possible, hoping to avoid traffic. It was already near noon and the sun was directly over my head. In view of the fact that these byways were not marked, and that I could not be guided in my direction by the sun, I resorted to a compass Harold Willis had thoughtfully given me. It had really been meant to serve in case of escape from capture, for travelling by foot at night, but here it served me well. The small roads were even worse than the highways, and I set my course almost due south, in time hitting the main road for Orleans.
On this great artery of refugee traffic I saw real misery. Food and money were beginning to give out for those who were afoot, on bicycles, or in horse-drawn vehicles. Most of the motorists had long since run short of gasoline. Some of these cars were being towed behind the carts of kindly peasants, often three and four in tandem if there were strong horses to pull. And cars with fuel were pulling their more unfortunate fellow motorists who were without. All along the road, averaging at least one to every twenty-five yards, were smashed-up and abandoned cars, some brand new, but for the most part of ancient vintage. It was a tragic sight, this roadside graveyard, and I have heard from good authority that as many people lost their lives in accidents during the war as there were French soldiers killed in battle. How true this is I cannot say, but the number of broken-up cars one saw everywhere, some from bombs, though mostly from accidents, was unbelievable. Billions of francs' worth of motor cars must have been destroyed in France alone.
Judging from the movement on the road all of northern France was trying desperately to get across the Loire. Somehow they seemed to think that the miracle would happen there, that the army would hold. It was almost as slow and difficult to advance along this highway, wide though it was, as it had been in the center of Rambouillet after the bombing. I figured that if I could cross the Loire, although Vouvray was on this side, I would be able to make better time. Before arriving in Orleans I turned to the right and headed for a bridge farther down the river. My first reason for not wishing to cross by the Orleans bridge was because I knew that the town was under continual bombardment, and my second was that experience had taught me to avoid towns whenever possible, as traffic is at its worst in them.
It was well on into the afternoon when I finally reached the far side of the Loire, having spent twenty very long minutes stuck on the middle of the bridge watching German bombers in the distance dropping their tons of destruction on Orleans.) and thinking that any moment they might come over us. Bridges were not amusing spots to be stuck on.
The south shore of the river was just as congested as the north. However, I plugged on mile after mile at snail's speed. This continual stopping and starting and running in low gear was eating away at my fuel supply and I again began to wonder if I would reach my destination before nightfall, or if I would reach it at all. There had been talk of blowing the bridges, and I would have to cross back to get to Vouvray.
Two French ambulances passed, going in my direction. I noticed that the traffic cleared for them whereas it would not budge for my staff car, so I followed close behind the second one, blowing my klaxon loudly as though I was with them. This worked for some miles until they turned off into the grounds of a military hospital.
In several towns I saw pumps where the military authorities were giving out gasoline, but as hundreds of people were standing in line before these pumps I did not stop. This same situation existed in front of the rare bread-shops that were open for business. People must have waited hours for a single loaf, and although I had had no food since the night before I continued on my way. The lack of food and sleep did not bother me, and I never knew fatigue. Three weeks earlier I could not have done this. I was soft then, but the war had changed all that.
Nevertheless, tough or not tough, I felt pretty happy when I turned a corner in a town that was still smouldering from a bombing, and ran head-on almost directly into one of our cars. James and Morgan were in it. Morgan jumped out and came over to me, while James held his place in the traffic lane. The Section had again moved. In fact I was within five miles of it. They had been to Vouvray, and headquarters was breaking up to retreat across the Loire. There was no need for me to continue, and I had calculated that my gasoline supply was too low to get me there anyway, so I followed James and Morgan to the Section's encampment.
This was just one of the many strokes of fortune that kept the Section together during these days of constant retreating. Had I followed the more important road down the northern bank of the river I would probably have found neither the Section nor headquarters. Our good luck was phenomenal, unbelievable, and stayed with us until the very end. Within a few hours the four ambulances that were missing turned up, along with Quigley and the truck, at the tiny, half-lost village where we were quartered. Some one had run into some one, who had heard. . . . Three of the cars found us by such devious means. Herb de Belle had managed to get a phone call through to Vouvray, and was on his way, nearly out of gasoline, when he came across Quigley going through Orleans with a truckful. That night, when we were reunited by nothing short of miracles, we drank a health to Lady Luck with Baron Empain's last magnums of champagne.
The following morning, very early, Major Martene called for four cars to report to a division some distance north of the Loire. I did not like this very much, and took the cars over myself. Jon Thoresen was left in charge of the other three drivers, who were McElwain, Rich, and Charlie Stehlin. On my map I discovered that Besse-sur-Braie, where Josette was staying with Claude and her mother, was only about thirty miles farther on. I could not resist the temptation. Surely they would wish to go to the south bank of the Loire, and I had ten gallons of gasoline in reserve with me. With their small car this would take them a long way.
It was lovely country that I sped through, this rich Touraine, the garden spot of France. And Besse was charming, situated in the midst of lush fields on the banks of a placid stream. I liked the place as soon as I saw it. Claude's mother was well known and a kindly inhabitant guided me to her home. There were roses blooming on the gate and the garden was a crazy-quilt of flowers. But the shutters were closed tight and the doors bolted. This stunned me, and for a moment I could not think. This was the last address Josette had given me. After Besse where would I find her in this war-stricken land? I pulled myself together and asked a neighbor when they had left. "On Saturday," she said. This was Monday, June 17. I was two days late. Had they left an address? No. They had only said that they were going to cross the Loire, probably at Amboise, which was the nearest bridge. They had several places in mind, the woman told me, but she could remember no names. With only this information to follow I knew that a hunt was hopeless. Nevertheless, I drove to Amboise and combed the town without result. There were half a dozen roads leading out to the south, any one of which they might have taken; so, feeling completely crushed, I turned back in the direction of our camp.
When I arrived there I found the boys grouped around Grima Johnson's portable radio. Marshal Pétain was just beginning the historic speech in which he asked Hitler for the peace terms. The end was near. We had known it for some time, but we had not wanted to admit it, even to ourselves. Silently the gathering broke up, and I wandered off into the woods to be alone and think.
So it was nearly over. What did this mean? That the French had lost the war, of course. Why? I summed up all the reasons that came into my mind. Why had an army that was considered the greatest in the world folded like a Japanese fan? Because it was a 1918 army, with a High Command thinking in terms of World War I, against a 1940 German Army with a High Command thinking in terms of tomorrow. Armies are not like brandy, which grows better as it grows older; they are like automobiles, and no one will dispute the fact that Henry Ford is building a finer car today than he did in 1918. An army, like an automobile, must go ahead with the times. The French had treated theirs like their finest brandy: they had allowed it to grow old and mellow in the wood. And the high command was even older and mellower. And then there was the unfortunate Maginot Line, which gave a false sense of security, and was like building a fence on two sides of your garden and hoping that the neighbor's cows would not discover that the other two sides were wide open. It should have run to the English Channel, and even then it would not have kept the airplanes out. Another element that did a lot towards overthrowing France was the Frenchman's love of red tape and unnecessary paper work. Thousands of men spent thousands of hours writing out special passes for innocent people, annoying them generally, while fifth columnists were following the even tenor of their nefarious ways, unannoyed and well armed with cleverly forged papers. If the French had used this wasted time in preparing themselves, things might have been different.
Then there was the element of luck. This element France had had against her from the beginning of the spring blitzkrieg. Perfect weather such as the country had not enjoyed in years favored the enemy bombers and motorized units, and caused the rivers to shrink as if purposely to aid Nazi engineers in spanning them with pontoon bridges. Most terrible of all were the refugees that blocked the roads, making it impossible for supply trains and reserves to reach the front. This last-named problem had certainly been one of the major causes of France's unexpected defeat. The Germans had not won the war, the French had lost it.
As I wandered alone through the woods, with hands dug deep into my pockets, and eyes cast on the ground, I spoke half aloud: "My France is crushed, overwhelmed---but never beaten."
The very terrestrial sound of our lunch bell came ringing through the woods and broke in on my thoughts. Smitty was the proud owner of this bell; it was his favorite war souvenir. He had taken it from over the gate we had been forced to tear down the day of our arrival in Beauvais, and had carried it with all the care he would have bestowed on a precious object. It was the apple of his eye and no one else was permitted to ring it if he happened to be about. Today I knew from the violence with which the bell clanged that Mess Sergeant LeClair Smith, late of the 5th Marines, was on the job.
Luncheon was a silent affair. The usual chatter and banter were completely missing, and I knew that my friends realized as well as I the gravity and sadness of the moment.
It was from this luncheon that Herbert de Belle and I set out to look for the four drivers across the Loire, and instead of finding them ran into the German advance and were captured.
And this brings us back to the end of the first chapter of this book, and the sill of an open window in Étampes, where de Belle and I sat smoking and planning our getaway.