Churchill's White Rabbit (5 page)

The large forts were simply overrun. On 19 May all 107 members of one French crew were killed defending their post when the German 16th Army pummelled them with heavy artillery. Within days of the initial assault Germany was pushing into France and the Maginot Line had become pointless. By 24 May the British Expeditionary Force had been separated from the French Army and had fallen back to the port of Dunkirk with the Germans breathing down their necks. No place evokes a greater sense of tragedy and heroism. The British were sitting ducks at Dunkirk and it was only due to the Germans holding back that they were able to evacuate.

The French were in similar disarray. Many soldiers began to openly desert and even those that continued fighting soon found themselves being forced to withdraw. Among them was Forest, who was stunned to find that the embassy staff had already left Paris, including the air attaché who he had hoped to get orders from. He saw that there was no choice but to follow his superiors in a retreat to the coast.

Forest watched his beloved France collapsing around him. At Bomber Liaison some of the French aircraftmen had already fallen into defeatism and watched refugees streaming down the roads with a mixture of pity and inevitability. The aerodrome had been bombed on 3 June, but much to Forest’s frustration there was no call to return the action, and on 11 June communications were finally cut. It was in this state of chaos that the embassy staff had simply vanished and Forest was left with no choice but to evacuate also.

It was a bad time in Paris. Forest had been sleeping at his father’s flat, which was conveniently located at the Passy Métro station – four years later Yeo-Thomas senior could witness his son’s arrest from his own window – and returned there to collect his belongings. The skies were black, with thick clouds spewed from the burning remains of oil factories at Port Jerome, which the Nazis had bombed in yet another effort to cripple the French defences. A black layer of heavy dust would fall on the city like mourning clothes and for months everything would be cast in tones of black and grey. Even the birds were leaving and for the next year Paris would become eerily quiet without their song.

Few people were out in the streets, but those that were cast unfriendly glances at Forest in his RAF uniform. One snapped at him: ‘Hold, an Englishman, I thought they had all buggered off long ago.’ Although Forest personally resented the insult, he recognised the feelings behind it. Allied politicians had underestimated the German threat and had sat on their hands when action was called for. The end result was Paris under occupation.

It was with a heavy heart that Forest walked the streets of his beloved city, not knowing when he would see it again. ‘The Champs Élysées [was] deserted, invisible almost in the fog of rolling smoke. He walked slowly along the avenue Kleber, took a last look at the Trocadero and the Eiffel Tower, and dropped into a small café at the corner of the rue Franklin for a drink. He was the only customer.’
¹

Paris was emptying ahead of the Nazi advance. Every vehicle still functioning was on the roads and packed with people, those without petrol rode bicycles and those without even that simple transport walked. The refugees formed a shocking procession, which Forest had to drive through on his way to Tours. Among them he caught glimpses of soldiers and even officers fleeing for their lives. From time to time a German plane would fly over and take pot shots at them or attempt to bomb them, and everyone would scatter for the nearest ditch.

Forest and his comrades eventually made it to Tours where they carried on with their normal duties for a few more days until the German advance forced them to decamp and retreat to Limoges. It was here that they heard of Pétain’s request for an armistice, a move that would leave Vichy France unoccupied but would make their government and police as much of an enemy as the Nazis in Paris. The situation seemed to be rapidly becoming hopeless and again the RAF retreated, this time to Bordeaux.

For the despondent Forest it seemed that his government had betrayed France and were colluding with the Germans. Pétain had taken defeat too graciously and was still eager for appeasement despite it already being proved pointless. He would buy southern France a brief respite from occupation, but it would not be a lasting or complete freedom. As the British retreated, Forest caught a brief glimpse of General Gouraud, former Military Governor of Paris, still wearing his French uniform with pride and determined not to collapse under the weight of invasion. Famous for his heroism in the First World War and for leading the French Fourth Army, he was something of an icon of the old honour of France for Forest. Standing with his many decorations, including the Légion d’honneur and Croix de Guerre, he carried himself with dignity despite the chaos around him. He was a lasting memory of the France that Forest would fight for even as the British abandoned Bordeaux and drove with all haste to Pointe de Grave, where two cargo boats were waiting to take them to England.

Forest and his companion Flight-Lieutenant James almost didn’t reach the boats – they stayed behind in Bordeaux to try and locate two of their men who had been separated from the main party in the night-time rush to get away from Tours. When their hunt proved in vain they alerted the local military authorities to be on the lookout for two men in British uniform and then made their own dash to Pointe de Grave, only to run out of petrol en route. Yet again luck played out for Forest when a petrol tanker happened to be travelling along the same road, but even so the driver was not happy to help them out and had to be threatened before he would give them a couple of gallons. This was not Forest’s finest moment, but in that instant getting out of France to fight another day was more important than the hurt feelings of one Frenchman.

At the Pointe de Grave troops trying to get aboard the cargo boats had created a bottleneck and Forest could afford some time to wander the Pointe and visit the local war monument that commemorated the arrival of US troops in 1917. As he stood there he penned a postcard for a dear old friend, Mademoiselle Jose Dupuis, remarking: ‘I know how you’re feeling at present, but don’t get discouraged. We will return and liberate France.’ Despite the occupation this quickly written note managed to reach its recipient.

As Forest stood by the war monument at Pointe and stared at a blue sky that seemed out of place with the terrible events unfolding around him, he could only see a snippet of the future and for him it was all about patriotism and anger at a conquering nation. His overriding emotion was a burning desire to free France once and for all, and he would achieve that any way he could. For a moment that desire almost had him desert from the RAF and head into France to prepare his people for the re-entry of British forces which he was certain would happen, but he recognised that that would only serve as a short-term means, perhaps with no definable results. So he said a last goodbye to France and boarded the cargo boats with everyone else, ready to offer his services to free France as soon as he set foot on English shores.

It was a three-day voyage to Britain and the port of Milford Haven. Awaiting the despondent ranks of British evacuees was a well-dressed RAF warrant officer who took one look at the returning men and yelled: ‘Make it slippy, you f***ing lot of slovenly bastards.’
²
Forest knew he was home.

Paris was now effectively under the full control of the Germans, while southern France was nominally under the governorship of General Pétain and the Vichy authorities; in reality every move they made was with one eye on Hitler and his Nazis. Paris was now a German city; enemy soldiers marched proudly in the streets and German reconnaissance planes landed in the Place de la Concorde. Famous hotels and buildings were draped with swastika banners: a giant one was draped on the Arc de Triomphe, to the great distress of watching Parisians.

There were odd, sporadic bursts of rebellion. One remaining French soldier opened fire on a group of Germans, killing one and wounding another before being gunned down in a spray of machine-gun bullets, but on the whole Paris fell quietly.

Businesses briefly closed and then reopened to serve their new clientele, some café owners offered free drinks to the invaders and the brothels merely closed their shutters for a short spell of mourning before welcoming the Germans with open arms. The first attacks on Jews began soon after; shops displayed ‘no Jews’ signs and the Theatre des Ambassadeurs announced that it was under new management, having been stolen from its Jewish owner, Henry Bernstein. As despair kicked in the suicides began: Thierry de Martel, a descendent of Mirabeau and a famous surgeon, injected himself with strychnine, leaving a note for his assistant that there would be no point trying to resuscitate him. At least fifteen other Parisians chose death over watching their city be trampled by the Germans, and there were probably more that have gone unrecorded.

Britain watched on in horror and wondered if it was to be next.

Yet again Forest felt at a loss. His first desire was to see Barbara and assure her that he was well, but at the back of his mind was the throbbing need to do something for France. After a brief reunion with his lover, he was posted to Uxbridge to serve in the Personnel Dispatch Centre. It was a desk job yet again, aside from frequent excursions to conduct groups of airmen to the Burroughs Wellcome Institute at Euston station for yellow fever vaccinations.

It would have been easy for Forest to grow despondent again, but he managed to find ways to brighten his days. His greatest triumph was getting hold of OHMS (On His Majesty’s Service) envelopes, which he addressed to various officials including the medical officer at Burroughs Wellcome Institute and the commanding officer at Uxbridge. Filling the envelopes with blank paper to make them appear full, he was able to present them to the guard on the camp gate and thus leave the Dispatch Centre any time he wanted to.

After a short time his skills as an interpreter were needed once again and he was transferred to Odiham in Hampshire where the Free French Air Force officers and men were being trained. The Free French movement was the brainwave of General de Gaulle, who was now in England trying to form an organisation that would rescue France. De Gaulle was adamant that the French people should resist wherever they could and announced this on a BBC radio broadcast to Paris. It was a complete contrast to the announcement Pétain had made on 17 June: ‘I tell you today that you must cease fighting.’
³
That same day de Gaulle left for London and put out his own, contradictory, broadcast on 18 June.

It was not enough, and de Gaulle knew it would not be. On 22 June the armistice between the Germans and the French was signed and for the time being Paris was lost. De Gaulle formed the Provisional French National Committee on 27 June, but the idea of a political committee was quickly quashed in favour of a military party and on 28 June the British government announced that it: ‘recognised General De Gaulle as Leader of all Free Frenchmen, wherever they may be, who rally to him in support of the Allied cause.’
⁴
Effectively de Gaulle had become the British symbol of the French nation and its resistance to oppression. The Free French movement soon had its name set in stone and it would become both an ally and a nemesis for Forest in the future. But for now he knew of it only as a fledgling organisation seeking to break the Nazi stranglehold on France.

In October Forest was selected for a recommendation for a commission. He was disappointed, when he arrived for his interview, at the quality of his fellow candidates, who he later described rather caustically as: ‘wingless wonders determined, if chosen, to do all they could to save the Administration Branch.’
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Forest remembered his own interview with bitterness: he entered the room as smartly as he could, determined to give a good impression, and faced a row of critical inquisitors who seemed equally determined to disapprove of him. The questioning was superficial and became bogged down with Forest’s French roots, which clearly did not appeal to his inspectors. When one asked about his education and was told that Forest had attended the College Dieppe and the Lycée Condorcet, he remarked volatilely: ‘College de Dieppe? Never heard of it. What sort of college was it?’ He was even less impressed with the Lycée Condorcet and wanted Forest to explain what they were equivalent to in Britain. Feeling a tad annoyed, Forest announced that he imagined they would be approximately the same as Oxford or Cambridge. There was no room for modesty during this ordeal.

Despite this humiliation, Forest received his commission and was even passed by the medical board as A1-4B. His superiors still thought him too old to fly and Forest was unwillingly marshalled into the ranks of the ‘wingless wonders’ he had so criticised, and reported to Babington, near Coventry, to become an intelligence officer for the 308 Polish Fighter Squadron.

This was his first taste of another side of warfare: the gathering of information from the enemy and determining its accuracy. But he so desperately wanted to do more than sit at a desk and analyse other people’s information – he needed to be hands-on.

He liked the men in the 308, but that only made matters worse. The young Polish pilots were training up for combat readiness in the winter months of 1940–41, something that should have at least put off the perils of war for a short time, but this was not to be. Air crashes during training in Hurricanes caused several fatalities. For Forest, who had become the unofficial father figure of the regiment and was fondly called ‘Papa’ (being the oldest officer in the squadron), these deaths hit hard. The situation only became worse when the squadron moved to Northolt, near London, in June 1941 and the young pilots saw real action for the first time. The death toll began to rise and ‘Papa’ Yeo-Thomas felt helpless and frustrated as he watched young men fly off and impatiently awaited their return.