Twelve Desperate Miles (11 page)

At 9:00 p.m. on the night of August 6—about the same time that George Patton and the Stratoliner were touching down in London—the
Contessa
spotted the rest of convoy HX 201 and rejoined the group to continue the voyage to Belfast and beyond.

The remainder of her maiden convoy trip would be made without incident. She found her way to Northern Ireland within the safe confines of HX 201, deposited her troops at the army camp in Bangor, the port just outside Belfast, and proceeded on to Swansea, Wales, where she disposed of an unspecified cargo that she’d hauled from Brooklyn in her holds.

Great Britain had the unmistakable appearance of a war zone. The docks at Swansea were thick with barrage balloons and antiaircraft guns. These had apparently impeded the Luftwaffe from pounding the harbor, but, as if to make up for this omission,
German planes had pulverized the city of Swansea and its surrounding communities instead. Block after block of urban landscape was cratered by bombardment.

Captain John had grown up in a seafaring family from the small harbor town of Pembroke, Wales, the birthplace of Henry VII (at the village’s major landmark, Pembroke Castle). It was not far from Swansea. It was said of John’s father’s side of the family that “
all the men and women knew how to handle a boat.” And the John family claimed one ancestor who sailed with distinction in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic
Wars and another who sailed on tea runs in a China clipper to Asia. Captain John had a couple of Ming vases in his home in New Orleans as proof of these expeditions, and at least one other descendant in Wales had a home decorated with a large Japanese cabinet from another of these voyages.

John was raised in a large family with three brothers and sisters, but all the siblings had left Pembroke by the time of his arrival in August 1942. Just who Captain John might or might not have visited upon his return to Wales, or what he thought of the destruction he saw in his native land, is unrecorded.

He didn’t have long to stay and contemplate the calamities of the war; he was still in it: on the twenty-fourth the
Contessa
sailed singly and without incident on its homebound voyage to New York.

I
t was not easy for Malevergne to find his way home to Morocco. No one in the Vichy administration, it seemed, was in a rush to let him return, and, once again, his profession made him stand out to the authorities. The head of the French navy in Morocco, Admiral d’Harcourt, perhaps not surprisingly, didn’t want the river pilot at Port Lyautey back once again in Africa to be tempted to aid the escape plans of all those who, like the Belgian pilots, might wish to find their way back into the war via Portugal or England.

So despite his acquittal, Malevergne could not get the visa that would allow him back to his home, back to Germaine and the children and his cottage in Mehdia. The months passed through summer and into fall.

Meanwhile, Malevergne suffered through a bout with malaria contracted in prison and could not afford quinine. In fact, without a job and stuck in France, he could not afford much of anything. His clothes were threadbare and he had no money to buy new ones. Malevergne was also unable to send anything to help his family in Mehdia, who he knew were suffering as well.

In September, his luck turned slightly. He was able to find office work in Clermont-Ferrand and heard good news from Gannat about Brunin and Paolantonacci, who had finally faced trial: Pao had been acquitted, and Brunin had been sentenced to the time he’d already served in prison. Unfortunately, the Belgian pilots had been given two to eight years of hard labor.

In late November the impasse with his visa was at last resolved. Admiral d’Harcourt agreed to allow Malevergne to reenter Morocco, but with one major stipulation: he could not stay in the Port Lyautey region, including his home in Mehdia.

He received his passport on December 3 and began saying his
good-byes—to Brunin, to Pao, to the people he had worked with over the past couple of months. Malevergne took the train to Marseilles on the tenth, noting the overcrowded train, the lack of heat, and a glacial wind whipping down the valley of the Rhône River.

He shipped from Marseilles to Oran on December 14, 1941, and had to spend a night in that city, during which he witnessed a galling display of Vichy patriotism—a two-hour parade of the province’s Legionnaires.

Finally he was aboard the train for Casablanca, December 16—a year to the day since his arrest. Back in Morocco, nearing Port Lyautey, he felt an uneasy mix of great excitement, dread, and caution, knowing that he was about to see his family again but remembering that he would only have a few moments there and that many difficulties of money and continued separation awaited him.

Germaine and the boys were on the quay as the train approached, and they all rushed together and met in a deep embrace. Little Claude, who had been feverish the morning his father had been taken from their home in Mehdia, was now walking and able to call him “Papa.” He seemed a little uncertain about his father; Malevergne thought it might be the military coat he was wearing. They sat together on a bench, stymied by their circumstances. So much to say; no time to say it. The reunion passed in whispers and tears. Ten minutes was an instant. Malevergne was soon back on the train to Casablanca and an uncertain future, while Germaine and the boys stayed standing at the station, their waves and faces fading backward from his window.

The country had changed in his absence. It had grown more “German,” in Malevergne’s estimation. An organization had been created called the Service d’Ordre Légionnaire, a sort of French version of the SS designed to infiltrate and coerce the machinery of its own government. According to Malevergne, “
the Legion seems to have adopted the German coarseness, passing alongside us without ever seeing us.”

Also grown in counterpoint to the Fascist elements was the organization
that he had helped form a year earlier, now commonly referred to as the Resistance. “
Born of the idea,” Malevergne wrote in a triumphal moment, “that we were not a race of beaten dogs, but patriots and past masters of the art of walking the tight rope until victory. For one who fell, ten would be added.”

Malevergne took a room at a hotel not far from the German Armistice Commission on the Boulevard de la Gare and reported, as requested, to the office of d’Harcourt, who did not deign to receive Malevergne yet allowed all the appropriate bureaucratic papers to be issued to him.

Malevergne soon discovered that he was being followed by police, at least during his first days back in Morocco. This did not stop him from becoming reacquainted with old friends and fellow travelers over dinner at the Brasserie des Arcades. The officers following him took seats in another room in the same restaurant. “
There was nothing for them to do except to take a table, too,” Malevergne commented. So the two groups dined agreeably in their separate stations, ignoring each other to the best of their abilities.

Thankfully, Malevergne was able to get a pass to visit Germaine and the boys for Christmas Eve and for a few days after the holiday. The simple joys of being once again with his family made him think of others not so fortunate, left behind in Clermont-Ferrand, including Brunin. But he couldn’t dwell in melancholy. There was work to be done.

Soon after the New Year, Malevergne was back in Casablanca, where he was able to find a job with an old friend, Charles Chenay, who owned a fish cannery in the city and was sympathetic to the role that Malevergne was about to chart for himself. Because it was winter, there was not much to do at the factory, except to educate himself on the canning business. Malevergne was given a salary of 1,500 francs a month and told by Chenay to “
arrange your time as you like. I know you well enough to know that you will not abuse this privilege.”

Chenay spoke this caution with a knowing smile.

Home again in Morocco, René Malevergne settled into something of a routine. He leased a room with a nosy but kindhearted landlady named Mina; took his meals at the Bouef à la Mode on the Boulevard de la Gare, near his home and just down the street from the German Armistice Commission; and began acquainting himself with some local “patriots,” including Lucien Garbieze, the director of a small manufacturing enterprise that made vegetable fiber from palmetto leaves.

Garbieze knew far more about Malevergne than Malevergne knew about Garbieze, and soon he would ask to meet with the river pilot at Malevergne’s new office at the cannery. There Garbieze confided to Malevergne that “
he had followed my odyssey closely” and that, knowing how Malevergne had “suffered in the flesh and spirit from the Nazi invasion,” he would love to “count me among his friends.” Malevergne understood the underlying meaning of this language and knew that by agreeing to be Garbieze’s friend, he was committing to the Resistance. Nonetheless, agree he did.

Malevergne’s new job with Chenay required him to periodically check on the arrivals of fishing boats at local ports so he could purchase sardines for the fish cannery. Because of this, he was granted an ongoing pass to a number of Moroccan communities, excepting Mehdia and Port Lyautey. Soon he began reporting on what he saw there to Garbieze and the Resistance.

Every evening between six and eight, Malevergne would go to the Regent Hotel in Casablanca for drinks and gossip. Garbieze kept a secret radio from which he could get news of the outside world, primarily from the BBC. He came to these gatherings and shared in whispers. The radio also offered a different perspective on circumstances in Morocco. The group learned, for instance, that the principal reason for a nationwide shortage of fuel was that the German Armistice Commission was appropriating its use for the homeland.

As the weeks and months passed, Malevergne was informed that his knowledge of the coasts of northern Morocco was of particular interest to his new friends. He soon found out, through his old compatriot
Paolantonacci, with whom he’d been reunited, that the intelligence he was passing along was winding up in the offices of an American in the city, a Colonel Dave King. He also learned that he’d been given a code name by the Americans—“the Shark”—and that vague plans were in the works for a possible invasion of Morocco.

Malevergne began to assist the Americans in smuggling arms and communications equipment. He and others also started to collect and pass along information on the depths of ports, locations of sandbars, landing sites, and Vichy defenses. They noted the characteristics and cargoes of ships leaving the harbor in Casablanca. They picked up port gossip coming from the crews of Axis-controlled ships, checking for the routes they planned on taking to escape Allied surveillance.

Through the spring and summer of 1942, the pace of activity of the underground picked up considerably. Malevergne’s work pass continued to allow him access to a number of ports, and he was even able to sneak off to Mehdia for an evening with his family in the cottage by the River Sebou. He was also asked to hide at least one refugee in the process of escaping Casablanca in his room, away from Mina, the nosy landlady.

Then, toward the end of summer, he was introduced to a man from the Resistance named Colonel Lelong, who was intensely interested in what Malevergne knew about ports and landing areas, particularly in northern Morocco.
Is there anyone who knows more than I about the area around Port Lyautey?
thought Malevergne. Something was going to happen soon, he realized, and he would most certainly be a part of it.

Several days later, the sounds of the French battleship
Jean Bart
, stationed in Casablanca harbor, unlimbering her guns, resounded in the morning air, waking the city and continuing through the day. The warship was simply testing its weaponry, but everyone knew it was doing so with the prospect of action to come. Anticipation and anxiety ran through the city like a sizzling current. The confidence of the Resistance grew with the sense that something was in the works and that it would happen soon.