The Cost of Courage Read online

  After all he has been through, the odds against an escape seem overwhelming. But a primal instinct propels Postel-Vinay off the bench, toward the door to the garden. He pauses at the exit for a couple of seconds, like a man looking to see if his car has arrived.

  Then the miracles begin: The guard makes no attempt to bar his way.

  Why not? The soldier is only supposed to stop the patients in blue uniforms, and no one else? Postel-Vinay is very disheveled, but he is dressed like a civilian. Oh, saintly German discipline! he thinks silently to himself.

  As he continues down the steps into the garden, he thinks he hears the soldier being called back into the guard room. But he does not turn around. He spots an archway in front of him and a workman — a Frenchman — coming toward him from that direction.

  “Where’s the exit?” Postel-Vinay asks, as casually as possible.

  “Take your first left and follow the long alley to the end.”

  Surely there will be another guard at the end of the alley, but Postel-Vinay isn’t about to stop now. And when he reaches the street, there is no soldier.

  He listens for someone running behind him and watches for the ambulance that has been dispatched to return him to his cell. But there is no one and nothing, except for two small children walking toward him on rue Cabanis, to his right.

  Now seconds matter.

  “Listen, kids, I’ve just escaped. The Germans will shoot me if they catch me. Give me enough money for the Métro. I’m wounded, without a cent, and I can barely walk.”

  The children are wide-eyed, astonished — and speechless. But they immediately start searching their pockets for change. Between them they have 23 centimes, just enough for one Métro ticket. They give him all of their money and point him to the closest Métro station — Glacière .*

  Postel-Vinay is self-conscious about the way he walks and looks; surely his appearance will draw unwelcome attention. He is unshaven, his suit is unpressed, there are no suspenders to hold up his pants, and no laces in his shoes. He looks like a young hobo, and the unhealed bones in his ankles are incredibly painful.

  If his life did not depend on it, he could not possibly walk more than a couple of blocks by himself. But his life does depend on it, and somehow, he summons a supernatural force from within that propels him down into the Métro Glacière.

  He thinks, If I were them, I would certainly alert all the subway station chiefs to look for me, and I would stop the trains on the nearest line. But the trains keep running.

  Underground there are throngs of Parisians — and many German soldiers. Postel-Vinay gets on the train DIRECTION ÉTOILE. He travels five stops, then gets off at Montparnasse. Randomly, he decides to go north, DIRECTION PORTE DE LA CHAPELLE — anything to get off the line he started on.

  The passages between the Métro lines suddenly feel incredibly long. When he reaches the platform, he thinks he’s Jean Valjean, the forever-on-the-run protagonist of Les Misérables — and the Nazis are all Javerts. When the train arrives, it is full of more German soldiers.

  He changes lines two more times and hobbles out at Trocadéro. He decides to telephone an old friend and fellow Résistant, Pierre Heeley. But he has no coins in his pocket. So he settles his gaze on a “perfectly suitable older woman.”

  “Excuse me, madame. I am an escaped prisoner of war. My feet are wounded from walking and I want to telephone a friend. Could you give me just enough for one call?”

  Like the children on the street a half hour earlier, she says nothing; just hands over the necessary coins and disappears. Postel-Vinay makes his call, but there is no answer. Then, wretched luck: His coins are not returned to him.

  Now he sees a man in a Métro uniform approaching him, and this time he is certain he is done for.

  “Excuse me, sir,” says the Métro man. “A woman I know told me who you are. I can help you. First of all, take twenty francs — in coins, because it will be more useful to you that way. If you can’t reach one of your friends, come back here around eleven thirty tonight. I’ll be here until midnight. I won’t take you to my house, because of the curfew; I’ll put you in a broom closet. You’ll have a bad night, but when the first Métro comes in the morning, I’ll come and get you.”

  Postel-Vinay thanks the stranger with all his heart, and just as quickly, his benefactor disappears. In a city filled with noncombatants — Frenchmen who are neither resisting the Germans nor collaborating with them — there are a remarkable number of secret heroes. And when a downed British or American pilot knocks on a stranger’s door in the countryside, 99 percent of the time, he will be hidden rather than betrayed.

  Postel-Vinay takes the Métro to rue de la Pompe to see if there is anyone in the apartment of his friend Pierre Heeley. But the shutters are closed; he must be away on vacation, or on a voyage.

  Now he is so exhausted and so thirsty that he commits what he knows is a “folly”: He steps into a bistro in his hobo garb to order un demi. It tastes like “the most delicious beer ever drunk.”

  He must call someone who will recognize his voice so that he won’t have to say his name over the telephone, especially if he’s speaking to someone in the Resistance. His friends Henry and Suzanne Rollet were part of the underground fight long before Postel-Vinay was arrested, so he settles on them. He returns to the phone booth at Trocadéro.

  “Hello! Henry! Yes, my friend, I am completely cured, and I’m spending a few days in Paris. Could I come see you tonight?”

  “What a great surprise,” Henry replies. “But of course — with joy. We’ll wait dinner.”

  “Thank you so much. I’ll be there, but it will probably take me an hour.”

  The Rollets live at 68, rue Nollet, in the 17th arrondissement. Postel-Vinay will have to change at Étoile, then take the train to Rome. In between Boissière and Kléber — back on the line he first jumped on after his escape — the train rumbles to a halt. Again, he’s sure the Germans have discovered him, but again, the interruption means nothing.

  When he steps out of the Rome Métro, he proceeds in the opposite direction from his destination. He confuses rue des Dames, rue de Saussure, and rue Lebouteux, and suddenly he is in a new nightmare. Then he finds himself back in front of the Rome Métro. Parisians sitting outside a café stare at him. If they notice him this time, it’s because they noticed him a few minutes earlier. “Who is this young tramp who can barely stand up and doesn’t even have a cane?” he imagines them wondering.

  Without his glasses, he can barely read the street names on the sides of the darkening buildings. He takes a left on rue Boursault, and a right on rue de La Condamine. Finally he is going in the right direction, and he spies his destination: 68, rue Nollet.

  Utterly exhausted, he must still climb five flights of stairs. With one more supreme act of will, he makes it up to his friends’ apartment.

  “What a joy!” Henry declares.

  “No! Look at the shape I’m in.” Then he adds the caution every escapee seems to offer whenever he reaches safety: “I’m not even sure the Gestapo hasn’t followed me here.”

  “Ridiculous,” Henry says. “I’ve opened my last bottle of champagne, it’s cold and we will drink it with dinner.”

  That night, Postel-Vinay has the soundest sleep of his life. The next morning, he wakes up with an incredible feeling: “Beloved liberty! Liberty miraculously reconquered, but still so fragile …”

  TWELVE DAYS after Postel-Vinay’s escape, his friend Henry Rollet makes contact with Patrick O’Leary, the head of one of the two Resistance organizations Postel-Vinay worked with before his arrest. O’Leary has always promised that he would get him out of the country if it became absolutely necessary, and he is a man of his word. His message to Postel-Vinay is that he must reach Marseille in four days, on September 18, where he will contact Georges Zarifi, at 12, allée Léon Gambetta.

  Henry organizes Postel-Vinay’s escape from Paris meticulously. The first leg is a bicycle ride to Pont Saint-Michel station —
a departure point chosen to avoid the larger stations, which are more dangerous because they are more heavily patrolled by the police.

  At the end of a bridge over the Seine, he is met by Henry and another co-conspirator, Jean Vialla, who takes Postel-Vinay’s bicycle and rides away on it. Then Henry guides him down the stairs into the station.

  They change trains at Juvisy and Brétigny. At six the next morning they arrive at Coutras. Now, the hard part: He must cross the line between occupied and unoccupied France. He has no idea when or how he will do it; he only knows that he must meet a guide in the café in the train station at ten o’clock. Then he is supposed to ride a bicycle for twelve miles. But will he have the strength to do that?

  The café isn’t open yet, so he and Henry sit in the waiting room, a dirty, poorly lit room, with a stone-cold stove in the corner on a black and chilly morning. Suddenly two policemen walk in. Is this the end of his voyage? Postel-Vinay remembers the name on his false identity card in his pocket: Fernand François Claude André Duval, an engineer, born July 4, 1912, in Algiers. But the policemen never approach him. Instead, they sit down and talk quietly.

  Fifteen minutes later, they stand up to leave.

  Exactly on time, the young guide arrives at the café with two bicycles. Postel-Vinay and Henry say their goodbyes, and Postel-Vinay begins to pedal painfully behind his guide. Often he has to get off and walk to climb a hill. The weather is clear and fresh and dry. After about two hours, his guide finally dismounts and tells Postel-Vinay to do the same.

  They walk through a silent forest until they reach a clearing; a farmhouse lies beyond it. The guide tells Postel-Vinay to wait outside while he goes in to meet the residents. A moment later he signals him to follow him into the house.

  The farmer and his wife greet him like a son. On the dining room table, among other marvels there is a huge smoked ham. They explain to him that he will be crossing the border between the two zones that evening — in an oxcart with a secret compartment!

  After a magnificent lunch, Postel-Vinay retires for a nap in a large bedroom upstairs. Three hours later, he is awakened by the farmer’s wife: Time to go.

  The farmer removes a plank from the oxcart to reveal his hiding place. It’s so narrow he’s grateful that his months in prison have made him so thin. After a short ride, the oxcart comes to a halt, and the plank beneath him disappears so that he can climb out.

  The farmer kisses him on both cheeks and sends him on his way. After a couple of hundred yards on foot, he reaches the zone libre. And his next guide — “small, round, and dark” — appears out of the darkness to lead him to the automobile he has borrowed from a local doctor.

  Another two hundred yards and they reach the car. “I will take you to Ribérac,” the new guide explains. “You will spend the night in a hotel there. At seven o’clock in the morning you’ll catch a bus for Brive, and from there, the train to Marseille.”

  The next day, he travels for sixteen hours, reaching Marseille Saint-Charles station at eleven fifteen, just forty-five minutes before the curfew. Outside the station, there is a taxi driving by — and it stops for him!

  Two more miracles.

  “I’ve sprained my ankle and I need a hotel for the night,” Postel-Vinay tells the driver.

  “Well,” he replies, “all the hotels in Marseille are full. But I’ll help you out. I know a woman who will put you up in her house. And it will be cheaper than a hotel! Will that suit you?”

  “Perfect!”

  The driver delivers him to a mansion that shows no sign of being a commercial establishment. The proprietress welcomes him and gives him a room with a big bed and a lovely bathroom. Not even a registration form to fill out!

  He leaves the house the next morning and walks out into a beautiful Mediterranean light “that chases away unhappiness.” It is Friday, September 18, 1942. He asks another “suitable-looking” passerby for directions to allée Léon Gambetta, the home of his fellow Résistant Georges Zarifi.

  Georges is an old friend, who has been in the Resistance as long as Postel-Vinay. He is about twenty-five, thin and athletic, a member of the French national tennis team. He comes from a wealthy family from Greece.

  When Postel-Vinay reaches Georges’s house, he is welcomed by his father. As with so many other young Résistants, it is never entirely clear how much his parents know about what Georges is doing. So Postel-Vinay assumes his father’s ignorance and repeats his usual story about having just sprained his ankle. The father greets him warmly and tells him Georges will be back home for lunch.

  When Georges arrives a few hours later, he tells Postel-Vinay that he has arranged for him to leave for Gibraltar — with forty other escapees!

  The next morning when he arrives at nine o’clock at Saint-Charles station, Postel-Vinay is reunited with Patrick O’Leary, a man he particularly admires for his judgment and his organizational talent — qualities that he did not find often enough among many other Resistance leaders. O’Leary himself is in charge of the operation. The escapees break off in groups of three or four to take their places on the train. The RAF pilots with him have fake papers identifying them as deaf-mutes, so they won’t betray themselves with their accents. The others include French and Polish agents, and even one German, Paula, who has been Patrick’s secretary.

  The train takes them to Perpignan in the south of France, not far from the border with Spain. Postel-Vinay’s ankles begin to give out on their walk to the beach, and two big Canadian airmen carry him between them.

  Hiding behind a dune, he is approached by an RAF pilot from New Zealand — whom Postel-Vinay has actually rescued one year earlier from the farmhouse where he had been hiding after his plane was shot down. And this pilot also had stayed with Suzanne and Henry Rollet in Paris — the same couple who harbored Postel-Vinay for a few days right after his escape.

  At two A.M., the boat that will take them to Gibraltar finally appears offshore, and a smaller boat reaches the beach to pick them up. A Polish sailor loads Postel-Vinay into the first vessel, then helps him on the larger ship a couple hundred yards later. The trip takes three days, and Postel-Vinay suffers from terrible seasickness until the weather finally calms.

  A fellow passenger tells him he must make contact with de Gaulle when he reaches London. Some Frenchmen are working directly for the English, but Postel-Vinay must work for the Free French! Postel-Vinay says he had already decided to do that.

  On the morning of the third day, they are met by the British vessel that will take them on their last leg to Gibraltar. Calm seas ensure an easy transfer. One of the British officers on board immediately offers Postel-Vinay his cabin; the Frenchman is moved by this “instant act of kindness.”

  The following afternoon, he finally reaches Gibraltar — “English territory.” He quickly makes contact with Captain Jacques Vaudreuil (real name: François Thierry-Mieg), who has been de Gaulle’s personal representative in the British colony since October. One of Vaudreuil’s aides warns Postel-Vinay that a vetting awaits him at Patriotic School in England — a prospect that fills him with disgust. After all he has suffered at the hands of the Germans, he must now endure a new challenge from the British.

  He understands the necessity of trying to ferret out double and triple agents, but he still resents the idea that he will have to prove himself again.

  THREE WEEKS LATER, on October 15, 1942. Postel-Vinay takes off from Gibraltar in a twin-engine DC-3, which delivers him to an airfield in the English countryside. From there, a bus takes him to a police station in a London suburb, where a charming British officer listens to Postel-Vinay’s unbelievable tale of escape.

  The Englishman listens politely — and doesn’t seem to believe a single word Postel-Vinay tells him. Then he dispatches him to Patriotic School for further interrogation.

  This is the first stop for every self-described Résistant arriving in England during the war. Patriotic School has been created to distinguish between genuine Allied sympathizers
(“sheep”) and double agents who are really working for the Germans (“goats”).

  The London Reception Centre had been established at the Royal Victoria Patriotic School in Wandsworth by the British intelligence agency MI5 at the beginning of 1941. During the course of the war, thirty-three thousand refugees will pass through the center, where they are “questioned about their methods of escape, the routes they had followed, safe houses, couriers, helpers and documentation. Their statements [are] meticulously indexed and cross-checked against those of their companions and earlier arrivals. Intelligence [is] extracted and circulated to Whitehall departments.”

  Those identified as “goats” are shipped off to Camp 020, which oversees 440 prisoners during the course of the war. After an early instance of a violent, unauthorized interrogation, a strict rule against torture is enforced — because the British believe non-coercive interrogations are the ones most likely to produce accurate information. This is also the conclusion of more sophisticated Allied interrogators almost everywhere during World War II.

  Patriotic School is an austere place, lightened a bit by a library that reminds Postel-Vinay of a London club. It is filled with refugees from every country invaded by the Nazis, many with escape stories just as implausible as his own. After eight days of waiting, his interrogation by the British finally begins.

  The examination lasts five days: two or three hours in the morning and another two or three hours in the afternoon. He has to recount all of his experiences in the Resistance twice — first chronologically, then divided up among the various branches he has served in.

  When he describes his escape from the mental hospital in Paris, he mentions the 23 centimes he received from the boys in the street. “And then I took my second left —”

  “That’s impossible!” his interrogator interrupts. “The rue Cabanis, where the hospital exit is, ends at the rue de la Glacière. So there is no ‘second left’!”†

  They agree to examine a map of the neighborhood together.