大象传媒

Paris 1944 and WW2 was raging, my brother and sister had been sent away and as things got worse I was sent to an Uncle鈥檚 at Bellegarde near the Swiss border. I was very happy to go and left on the 10th June by train with my father. It took 3 days to reach Lyon and by then the food had run out. We were directed to change trains at Lyon and boarded an empty train for Chambery. We purchased more food and then slept like logs. On reaching St Andre du Gas, still a long way from our destination, we were ordered to leave the train. There were no more railway lines. The village was teaming with Germans and it was not safe to stay, so my father left me at the convent with the 15 nuns, destitute old ladies and 17 poor little orphan girls. Unbeknown to my family, the convent was the centre of the local Resistance. A Red Cross train broke down near by and rather than the Germans taking everything, the Resistance asked what the convent wanted. Mother Superior refused the offer and advised them not to take anything as well.

A few days later I awoke to find the convent apparently deserted and an SS guard patrolling the garden. I found the other children hiding in the attic and joined them. We saw dead bodies being unloaded in the village square and later I was told that 1 male per household had been executed for the Red Cross theft. The Germans then left the village. That day my uncle Gaston arrived and we then walked 3km to catch a train for Chambery. We stayed a night in a coach house with friends and then arrived after a coach trip in Seysel. From there we were taken by van to some remote place from where we walked 36km, all the time being shadowed by the Resistance as the place was crawling with German patrols and we had no movement papers.

We came to a very steep gorge with a raging torrent of a river and only a single plank of wood with a rope as a make shift bridge. The Resistance caused a diversion and somehow we managed to get across. We carried on and then 500metres from our goal I was so exhausted I could not go on. My uncle, who was scared of attracting attention tried to cajole me but I couldn鈥檛 move. My cousins appeared and put me in a small trailer and pulled me to the house. The family referred to me as the 2nd Ulysses after that.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jacci Phillips of the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Mrs E Twinberrow and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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