Rosie's War (21 page)

I have often wondered why Frida asked me to go with her and not one of her close political friends such as Penelope, Olga or Sofka. They would certainly have been more in tune with her. While I liked Frida a lot we were very different. She was nearly ten years older than me and a far more reflective, thinking person. I knew she considered me something of an undependable flibbertigibbet. Nevertheless, we turned out to be a good team over the coming months. I never did find out why she chose me.

The search for an escape route lasted a couple of weeks but without success. Our enthusiasm and energy rapidly dried up as we came into November. The weather turned cold and we began to get disheartened. Perhaps we had left it too late? The air was freezing and the first snows not far away. To make matters worse, my old trouble with bronchitis had started up again. Whoever heard of a prisoner escaping with a hacking cough?

One day a band of workmen arrived to put the various hotels’ central heating in order for the coming winter. On our floor we had a cheerful, elderly man called Alain. He spoke good sailor’s English. He had served in the merchant fleet for years and spent the first day gaily recounting stories of the dockland bars and brothels in places such as Tilbury, Southampton, and Liverpool. That night Frida and I decided that we would confide in him.

‘I’d like to get back to London before the war ends,’ I said to him the next morning as he was mending the radiator in our room.

He had just finished telling me a long story about a visit he had made there in the early 1920s. I mentioned my wish in a very offhand way. I didn’t want to commit myself. His eyes gleamed.

‘If Mademoiselle really wants to go,’ he said, ‘I can help you. There is a sewer pipe at the back of this hotel. It will lead you outside the camp. I know it well. I have worked on the sewers here.’

My heart sank at the prospect of struggling though miles of filthy tunnels which were probably full of rats. Still, it was an idea. ‘And then what?’ I asked.

‘Very simple. It is three or four days’ march to Belfort. Then you are near the Swiss border. I have a brother there who will help you.’

I wasn’t very enthusiastic. Nevertheless, I discussed it later with Frida on our regular pre-curfew walk around the grounds.

‘Great,’ she said, after I had told her Alain’s plan. ‘We crawl through the filthy sewers and then trudge for three days in our stinking, wet clothes across the countryside into the foothills of the Juras. We’re escapees, Pat, not martyrs.’

We both burst out laughing at the absurdity of the idea. We’d have to think of something else. The next afternoon our money orders from home came through at last. Mine arrived with a typical note from my father advising me not to be extravagant in the camp but to save my money for later. Little did he know how economical I had been. I had been reduced to chewing the sour regulation loaves, as everything we could sell had been advertised on the exchange and mart board. Even my beautiful ski suit and boots had gone. We had about 1,000 francs between us (almost £250 today). We thought that this would be enough to last a week or so. I approached our friend again the following day.

‘We need to go soon, Alain, or the weather will be totally against us. But we’re not keen on the sewers idea. Is there no other way of getting out?’

He grinned slyly. ‘My friend is working this week in the Casino. Maybe he gives you some keys. You hide there at night, cut the wires and go on the early train. He tells me there is no control on it.’

I rushed to tell Frida. This seemed promising, at the very least. Why hadn’t we thought of the Casino before? For some reason we had always ignored that building on our previous scouting missions. As soon as we could we walked over there and began to search around. The Casino was part of the spa complex and looked on to the park and our hotel. The rear of the building abutted the barbed-wire perimeter fence and a main road beyond it. We discovered that the small outhouse at the rear was now being used as a coalbunker. From a distance it looked as if the barbed wire had been disturbed, probably to allow the coal lorry to get through.

Was this really the weak point in the camp security where we could try to get out? If it was, it would mean spending the night in the outhouse and cutting the barbed wire at the moment of changeover for the sentries. Once we got through the perimeter fence we would be on the road to the station and the town. The main gate to the camp and the guardroom would be on our left. So we wouldn’t have to go through them from the camp itself but we would still have to pass right by. With any luck we would be taken for French workers. We would need two keys from our helper: one for the front door of the Casino and one for the door leading to the outhouse.

We were both incredibly excited by this discovery. We would go for it. We walked around the grounds talking and planning. We knew there was no problem being out after curfew, as we had often slipped out in the evening. We needed someone to cover our tracks after we had escaped. She would have to stay the night in the coal bunker with us. We decided to ask Penelope. We explained to her that once we were through, we needed her to take the wire cutter, fasten the window and make her way back to the Casino, locking the door of the outhouse behind her. She would have to wait until the night curfew was lifted, unlock the door of the Casino and slip back to her bedroom at the Grand Hotel in time for the morning roll call. Alain would pick up the keys and the wire cutter from her. She readily agreed.

That was it. We were going the following night. We sat down to plan our route. We knew from the workmen that there was an early morning train for Épinal, just a few miles away. From the map it looked as if we would have to go further north from there on a branch line to the large town of Nancy. And from Nancy there was a direct train south to Besançon. Our route seemed to involve a lot of travelling and changing of trains. We would have to place our trust in Alain’s assurance that there really were no German controls on the train, even in this part of Occupied France so close to the German border.

How could we make sure that our three room-mates weren’t blamed for our escape? They needed an alibi of sorts for the evening. Penelope, who was organizing the sets and costumes for the Christmas pantomime, suggested that Shula and Olga work in the main foyer helping Sofka to design costumes. She calculated that anyone around would also assume that she was working with them, given that she had made such a fuss about being in charge of the whole thing.

We were right to be concerned about our friends, as the Kommandant did indeed take retribution on them. But, as we learnt some years later, the girls succeeded in turning his punishment into a farce. Once our absence was noticed, they were called to the Kommandant’s office. They claimed ignorance of our movements. Regardless of this, they were escorted by two sentries to a small guard house and locked up with a sentry on duty outside. They were to stay there until they were ready to inform the Kommandant of our whereabouts. There was one outside lavatory, which they used in a constant procession throughout the night, banging on the door to waken the sentry every few minutes. He had to unlock the door and accompany them one after the other to the outhouse. In the morning they hung out of the windows shouting for food. By sheer chance there was a Red Cross delegation due that afternoon and the Kommandant could not afford this unwelcome diversion. They were all let out.

The last thing we needed to work out was how to make sure that our escape went undetected by the authorities for as long as possible. After all, I worked every morning at the Kommandant’s office – my absence there would be queried immediately. We decided that the best thing was for me to take to my bed. The following day after I finished work, Frida would pass the word to the office that I had gone down with food poisoning. That should give me a couple of days’ grace. We also had to have someone to cover for both of us at the morning roll call, which was a bit of a mumbling occasion. I found Shula drawing by the steps of our hotel. She wasn’t particularly surprised at my news.

‘I’ll miss you terribly, Patachoun,’ she said, holding my hand. ‘But you’ll succeed. Forget you’re English once you’re out of here. Talk and think in French. You speak it like a native anyway.’ Paradoxically, her optimism made me feel defensive and defeatist.

‘But we don’t even look French. What about my height? And teeth? I look more German, if anything.’

‘You’ll be fine. Switzerland’s not far.’

‘Oh, I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing, Shula. What about my parents? Should I put them through any more? It might be months before they get any word from us. They’ll be worried stiff.’

I was, in truth, beginning to panic about the escape. Whether we would succeed was all a question of chance: either we would be lucky or we would be dispatched to work in a German munitions factory. After all, we had no false papers and not much money. We weren’t even sure if we could travel on the trains. And my cough! It came in waves – a hard, barking sound. It made me feel very conspicuous.

I went to bed that night dreaming I was a child again, walking over the Norfolk fields and shouting at my family to wait for me. My jacket had caught on a barbed wire fence and I couldn’t move. I woke up in the dark of early morning and lay in bed worrying. I knew that there was no backing down. We had made our decision. We were going that night.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Escape

I
had long planned how to get our passports from the Kommandant’s office. I knew I was trusted with routine paperwork and felt I could easily pick them up without anybody querying why I was there and what I was doing. That morning, almost fainting with tension and fear, I walked over to the cupboard in the anteroom and quietly removed our passports. There were hundreds of other documents there. Ours would never be missed until we were well away from the camp.

‘Fräulein Say. Can you file these papers please?’

I turned round. A soldier was staring at me and holding a raft of documents. I must have looked like a dead fish gaping at the man.

‘Are you all right, Fräulein?’

With a huge effort I closed my mouth and smiled. ‘Of course,’ I said, taking the papers and putting them with the passports. I walked out of the room. I couldn’t help feeling that as an escapee I had some way to go in the confidence stakes.

Later that afternoon Alain confirmed to us that as far as he knew the Germans had not, as yet, put any checks on passengers for the Épinal train. ‘You’ll have to settle in the outhouse before curfew,’ he said as he handed us the keys. ‘There’ll be a few minutes for you to get away when the sentries do their changeover.’

I couldn’t help one last moan. ‘Alain, we’re going to freeze lying in there.’

‘Well, with a bit of luck the sentries will think the same way and toddle off to the guardroom for a hot drink and some warmth,’ Frida countered quickly. She grabbed her coat and a piece of paper and strode towards the door.

‘Anyway, I’d better go and see our friend Servais,’ she said. ‘He’d be really suspicious if I didn’t turn up for our daily musical battle. Nothing must seem out of the ordinary on the day we escape. Let’s leave with one more small triumph against Nazi propaganda. See you later.’

With a smile she was gone. Frida had taken it upon herself to provide a daily list of suggested music to be played over the tannoy of the camp. Although Jewish composers such as Mendelssohn were still banned, she tried to get as many Polish or Russian pieces played as possible. Her latest success was Borodin. That Germany was now at war with the Soviet Union had apparently not been noticed by Servais.

When she got back we made final preparations alone in our room. We parcelled out our remaining possessions for the others, left them a note saying that we were just about in our right minds and set off downstairs. At the entrance to the hotel we met one of the British women who helped to run the camp. She looked at us with obvious disdain.

‘You realize that it’s nearly seven, I presume? The curfew whistle will be going in a few minutes. Make sure you’re back on time.’

‘We’re just going to get some air, Miss Short,’ I said. ‘We’ll be back.’ We slipped into the Casino where Penelope was already waiting for us.

‘Quick, you two,’ she whispered. ‘The chorus girls are still rehearsing in the hall. Let’s hide here.’

We stayed in the shadows. We had forgotten about the chorus girls. In a matter of minutes they put out the lights and left. We heard the curfew whistle. In pitch dark we tiptoed to the outhouse. Penelope unlocked the communicating door and went inside. We heard her trip and swear quietly.