Ormerod's Landing (27 page)

With that she went gracefully into the cool house and returned with a small leather case which she opened to reveal a medal. On the face of it was the two-barred cross of Lorraine. It was, she said proudly,
La Medaille de la Resistance,
awarded only to members of the French underground movement.

Naturally I asked her questions about her part in the move
ment, but she politely declined to enlarge on it, merely showing
how pleased she was that I had enjoyed seeing the medal. However, I was conscious that she wanted to tell me some
thing, something connected with England and with the medal,
and I was right. On my third visit to her house, the day before I was due to fly from Noumea, she quite abruptly began to tell me the story.

'I was one of the first agents of Free France to be landed in my country after the German Occupation, you know,' she said, glancing to see my reaction. 'I was with an Englishman.
A man codenamed Dodo. His real name was Ormerod, George
Ormerod. He was a policeman. It was only September 1940, just a few weeks after the British deserted from Dunkirk.'

My journalist's desire not to spoil a good story prevented me from querying this version of history. I was glad because the next thing she said was: 'The Englishman was a London
policeman. I was going to make a check on possible resistance groups in Normandy, to help to form them and organize them,
because these were very early days and little had been done to oppose the Germans. My companion was going to Paris to arrest a murderer.'

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It was one of those moments when you swallow but say nothing. She went on: 'We were landed by a British submarine on that same island of Chausey which I mentioned to you the other day. It was necessary to kill some of the enemy. After that the Germans very kindly put us ashore on the mainland and we had a strange and dangerous journey through France to Paris. We did not always - how do you say it? - "get on" very well because we were both so different. He was a petit bourgeois, a Conservative and a policeman as well, and I was a radical, I suppose almost a Communist
in those days. But we lived together, sometimes very danger
ously, for some weeks, and there was a feeling, a bond, between
us. I often think of him now,' she laughed. 'He was so ... old fashioned.'

'And he was going to Paris to find a
murderer’
I asked
incredulously.
'Paris?'

'Yes Paris, with all the Germans there. But he was very determined and one-minded about it. Just as I was about my mission. Very often the two objects got in each other's way. And he did not like killing Germans.'

At this point she took the story from the start and talked for about two hours about this strangest of adventures. I was
almost conscious of my eyes widening as she related the tale.
Viewed now it seems extraordinary. But she spoke of unusual
times.

When she had finished - and after a long pause and silence - I told her I would like to write something about it and saw
immediately how the alarm jumped to her face. 'Oh no, please
Monsieur,' she remonstrated. 'I am telling you because you are English and in many ways it is an English story. Not because I want you to write it. That would be terrible.'

Every journalist knows the sinking feeling when someone
blithely tells him they know of a plan to steal the Crown Jewels, or blow up Parliament, and then pleads with him to keep it confidential. But it was impossible for me not to agree. I promised I would write nothing and she believed me and thanked me. Then she said: 'One day perhaps you can tell it. When I am dead.' Then she smiled that distant smile, a smile
apparently intended for someone far away beyond the horizon,

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and added: 'But first you must find George Ormerod - my English policeman - and ask him too.'

I returned to England and pushed the story from my mind, certainly from any professional point of view. After all it was
only one amazing thing in the war when many amazing things
had happened every day before breakfast. At first, however,
from private curiosity, I checked the name and history of Detective-Sergeant George Ormerod in the records of the
Metropolitan Police. He was there all right but with no clue to the extraordinary escapade of 1940. He retired in 1965 with a pat and a pension.

But that was as far as I took it. After all, I had a promise to keep.

Then last summer in Paris I went to the Museum of the Order of the Liberation in the Boulevard Latour-Maubourg, a poignant collection of mementoes of the Occupation of France and the Resistance Movement. On a day when I have
no doubt the Louvre was crowded and people were frenetically
ascending and descending the Eiffel Tower, I was the only visitor in that sad gallery. Marie-Thérèse Velin had returned to my thoughts.

That evening, on the impulse, I took a train to Granville in
Normandy, where Marie-Thérèse and George Ormerod, those
odd companions, were so obligingly landed by the Germans.
In a bar by the harbour the following night I saw what I next
sought, a group of blue-overalled fishermen, middle-aged to
elderly, the sort who looked as if they had been in the town in the wartime days.

After a few cognacs and some general conversation, I tried the subject. Casually I said:I met a Frenchwoman a few years ago in New Caledonia. Her name was Marie-Thérèse
Velin. She told me she had come here to Granville during the
war as a Free French agent.'

It was first time lucky. Immediately the expressions changed,
especially that of one of the older men. The others looked at
him oddly. 'The Dove,' he muttered. 'She was called the Dove.
Her name is not popular in this place.' He shook his heavy, grey head and swallowed the rest of his cognac.

I was here then, in Granville,' he confirmed. 'We had re-

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turned defeated from the war and she came here and she wanted us to fight. There was no sympathy for fighting, you
understand. France was crushed, in pieces. The Germans were
here. And she wanted us to fight! She was brave, I suppose, but she was dangerous, Monsieur, very dangerous. We are not fond of her memory.'

He put his elderly, wooden hand on my shoulder and led me to the door overlooking the stone harbour. It was two in the morning and there were a few doleful lights along the quay. 'Over there,' pointed the fisherman. 'Where the third light is. That is the place where she landed in Granville. The mad thing is the Germans brought her themselves. In their own boat!'

I know,' I said. 'She told me. There was an Englishman with
her.'

He nodded. 'A decent man,' he shrugged.I don't know why
they sent him.'

He closed the door against the night on the harbour and we
went inside again. There were more cognacs at the bar. It was
obvious that he was going to tell me his version of the story and he did. The others listened, making the occasional comment and observation, but in the main listening like children who know a tale by heart but are fascinated to hear it again. When he had finished we were all silent and I was looking through the bottom of my glass. 'She is back in France now,' he concluded to my surprise. 'She is dead you know. She is buried in her village near Mortagne in the Perche country of Normandy. There are some people here in Granville who would have seen her in her grave a long time ago.'

In the September of that year, by now fascinated with the story of the Dove and Dodo, I returned to Normandy and attempted to retrace the journey they took in 1940. It was the same season, the countryside was full and brown with the
harvest, cider apples were red in the orchards, and the misty
mornings gave way to delicate days.

Although there were, naturally, some changes in the land
scape, they were easily detectable and my surroundings on those autumn days must have been much as theirs would have

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been. The battles of the summer of 1940 had stopped west of Dunkirk, when the French had surrendered, and from Granville through the Bocage region and the Perche, Normandy was physically unscarred. Four years later the time for battle came in that countryside. In 1940, war or no war, the harvest still needed to be gathered and the cider apples brought to the presses. The French defeat had not stopped the flowers
blooming or prevented the trees turning gold. But the land was full of weary soldiers returning, relieved but betrayed, to their
homes. For them the war was over.

At the end of this journey I went to the village cemetery at
St Luc-au-Perche, south-west of Mortagne, and without trouble
found the dignified tombstone of Marie-Thérèse Velin sitting
quietly amid all the model-village vaults in which the French take such a morbid delight. The inscription gives merely her
name and the dates 1914 to 1966. An impatient rush of Sep
tember leaves came across the stone as I was reading it. I felt a certain strangeness in this little Normandy cemetery in the autumn evening. I bent forward to brush away the leaves from her name but a fresh touch of wind did it for me. It seemed a long way from the Pacific Ocean.

The death of Marie-Thérèse Velin had released me from my promise not to write her story, but now it was necessary to seek out George Ormerod and, if possible, to persuade him to tell his part of the adventure.

It is rarely a complex matter to discover the whereabouts of a former policeman. The force tends to keep a general eye on the movements of its retired members if for no other reason than paternal concern for their welfare. It took me only a day to find that Ormerod, now in his early seventies,
was living with his wife Sarah in a block of maisonettes especi
ally designed for elderly people at Stevenage in Hertfordshire.

The following morning I drove north from London and
had no difficulty in finding Abacus Court, Stevenage, a well-
planned area with the old people's accommodation - maisonettes for couples and bed-sitting rooms for single residents -
grouped around a sheltered garden.

It appeared that ex-policeman Ormerod never availed him-

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self of any of the communal amenities offered by the estab
lishment, preferring to stay within his own solid front door.
His wife was a semi-invalid and the other residents rarely saw
her. Ormerod himself would sometimes walk to the local inn,
The Antelope, stay half an hour and then return. He also did the couple's shopping and took their washing to the launderette in the High Street.

Having reconnoitered, I decided on the frontal approach, but
with some apprehension. Ormerod having been a cautious
policeman, and now a virtual recluse, would hardly stand in
dulging in a chummy chat. It would be necessary for me to tell him my business clearly and quickly. I rang the bell. He took two minutes to answer it. He must have been on the lavatory because I heard the flush go. When he arrived at the
door and opened it he was still tucking his old-fashioned striped
flannel shirt around his trouser top. 'What is it?' he asked uncompromisingly.

He was a tall man and upright too. He had obviously been
broad in his time, although age had withered him down. The grey hair was cut very close around his powerful head. The face was lined but he had a good healthy look about him for someone who, by reputation, rarely went out. Perhaps he sat in the sun by an open window. His eyes were pale, almost as grey as his hair. He had all his own teeth.I want to ask you about France in 1940,' I said baldly.

His eyes lifted and he started to say something, then stopped
as if he could not frame the words. Then he said 'Bugger off,' and closed the door in my face.

From my reporter's experience I knew that a second knock
would either go unanswered or would result in an even ruder
dismissal. I went away. For an hour I sat in the pub, The Antelope, and thought about it before retracing the way to Abacus Court. I rang at his bell and he came to the door angrily as if he had been waiting in ambush.I told you to bugger off ...' he began.

Quickly I said:I have seen Marie-Thérèse Velin.'

That stopped him. His face changed. My hopes rose. He glanced behind him into the room. 'Can you come out?' I suggested quickly.

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'Of course I can,' he replied roughly. 'It's not a bloody
prison.' His voice went quiet. 'There's a pub called The Ante
lope. I'll be in there about seven tonight.'

I heard a woman's voice from within. He closed the door on
me without a further word.

By seven o'clock I had been in The Antelope for half an hour.
I was sitting in a corner but Ormerod spotted me as soon as he
came in. I started to get to my feet but he ignored me and went
straight to the bar and ordered a pint of ordinary bitter. The barman recognized him and nodded a 'good evening' but he was obviously known as a customer who did not indulge in a lot of conversation. The beer was drawn and Ormerod, after taking a first drink from the top of the tankard, turned and came directly towards me. He sat down and put the drink on
the table in front of him. He did not look into my face. Staring
to the front he said abruptly: 'All right. When did you see her?'

'Some time ago,' I replied cautiously. If I had told him how long ago I thought he would probably have got up and walked
out. 'I'm sorry to tell you she is dead now,' I said. 'She is buried in France. In Normandy.'

He nodded. 'At St Luc-au-Perche,' he said, pronouncing it
awkwardly. 'Yes, she would be.' He drank some beer. 'She wasn't very old,' he said thoughtfully. 'She was nine years younger than me, you know.' He added a nostalgic word -
'Then.' His more conversational tone gave me hope. It was his
first sign of friendliness.