The Girl from Station X (33 page)

Lew drove Anne to Ghent, to 85 Group Headquarters, Disarmament, and she visited Intelligence there. She was told by a Flemish girl that in Belgium much of the food was black market; if you had
money you could get almost anything but
if you are poor you can almost starve.

She discovered that the Residentz Palace, where
we eat, sleep and eat
, had been a pre-war luxury block of flats and also a Nazi headquarters during the occupation, so
there were still
a lot of German notices, desks, etc
around. A little Belgian man who owned a local restaurant, the Charbord, suddenly produced a card to show her that he
was a member of ‘The White Army’, a Belgian Resistance Movement whose badge had the insignia of a lion, and told her that he had been in prison in Germany for eight months. She felt
that she was beginning to penetrate beneath the surface and to learn more about how it had been in Belgium during the war years. This, coupled with her lively nightlife and driving round with Lew
in his Jeep – ‘
I associated with morons till I met you!’
he declared – meant that she was enjoying herself.

On 5 May, she saw in a newspaper
awful photographs of the bodies of Mussolini, his mistress and 2 other fascists hanging in the Square in Milan, where crowds spat on them
etc.
She found this sickening, observing that the Italians
were only too keen to follow him when he was a success
. Hitler was also reputed to be dead –
it later emerged that he had shot himself on 30 April, after marrying his mistress, Eva Braun – and the German army had lost Berlin, but my mother wrote loyally:
When Churchill
announces the end of the war, that will be the time to rejoice.

On VE Day, 8 May 1945, she was sad not to be in London to celebrate the Allied victory in Europe with her old friends in Bomber Command. She even thought wildly of stowing away on the plane in
which her boss was flying back to Britain that morning. Instead, she made do with listening to Churchill’s speech on the radio, then she, Lew, Betty and a few others went to the Brussels
Officers’ Club, where they talked to several RAF ex-prisoners of war, all making their way home,

dressed in every kind of get up, American shirts, khaki trousers, RAF tunics etc . . . most of them look in fairly good shape. Got a lift down to the town where
there were crowds of people, but not much enthusiasm. We made more noise than most of the Belgians put together – The Cathedral was illuminated and a lot of the shop windows and flags
everywhere. The Grande Place, which is the most beautiful place I have seen yet in Brussels was illuminated and a band playing and there were some fireworks – we called in at some cafes and
sang ‘Tipperary’ etc, but the best fun of all was driving through the streets standing up with our heads through the sunshine roof and then Lew, Betty and I sitting right on the roof
itself and singing every song we could think of.

Thus the war in Europe ended for my mother, but, like many others in the services, she went on working. Just after VE Day, perhaps because of the feeling of anticlimax, the diary is full of
complaints: about her boss, about the inefficiency of her
set-up
, about the idea of imminently being
cooped up with them in Germany
, about RAF
life in general, about being cut off from home – she and her colleagues were not allowed to tell family and friends where they were until censorship relaxed on 14 May – and about many
Belgians’ assumption that the British had not suffered as they had.
A lot of photographs of around St Paul’s, Coventry etc would have an enormous propaganda value out here,
just to give them some idea
, she notes.

Anne amused herself during her time off by going alone on mini sightseeing tours, once taking a tram to the outskirts of Brussels, where she watched locals dancing in a little square to three
men playing the concertina, and sipping aperitifs in cafés under the trees; another time she went to see the statue of the Manneken Pis. She wrote that she would have enjoyed these outings
even more if there was
someone congenial
with her. She must have been thinking of Joe.

In May, she decided
to try my hand at my greatest ambition, to go to Paris.
This was difficult without a Movement Order and she was told by Air Movements at Tactical Air
Force (Main) (TAF) that she needed a signed authorisation from the head of her section, Group Captain Walker. Certain that he would say no, she went anyway,
in fear and
trembling
, having decided to tell him the truth, that she wanted to go to Paris, not on duty, but to see ‘some people’
and this was the only time we should get
two days off together
. Walker, telling her to keep quiet about it, said that she could go. He
couldn’t have been nicer
, getting her a Movement Order
typed out, signing it himself and cautioning her that she had better say she was on duty. Within a short time, she was flying to Paris in an Anson; the plane passed over a wrecked marshalling yard,
which, she guessed, had recently been bombed by Bomber Command. She felt that she really knew now what it felt like to be one of those pilots,
to streak over, bomb your target and get
back again
. Her plane landed at Le Bourget and by four o’clock she was in Place Vendôme, Paris.

First, she had to go to the British Army Staff HQ in the Faubourg St Honoré to arrange a return passage next day, and to get accommodation for that night. To her shock, she was told that
there might be no flights back next day, due to impending bad weather, and that the third flight back to Brussels was already full, but ‘
as I was on duty’ (thank God &
G/Cpt Walker!) I was entitled to Air Passage
. She was then given a ticket for the Bedford Hotel, Rue de l’Arcade, behind the Madeleine, which had been requisitioned for those in
the forces and cost only five francs a night. She was amazed and delighted to have a private bath, though she had forgotten to bring a towel and had to dry herself on handkerchiefs. She rang SHAEF,
and Joe came at seven to take her out to dinner. They walked to the American mess in the Place St Augustin, seeing in the street two Americans she recognised from Bushy Park. Compared with
Brussels, she found Paris
like a dead town
. Taxis cost a fortune and stood empty, there were no buses or private cars, very few civilians in the streets and the only means
of transport was the metro – except, at the Rond Point, there were a few bicycles attached to small carriages, reminding her of
old wheelchairs in Palm Beach
. At the
Arc de Triomphe, a small crowd stood around the Unknown Soldier’s Tomb, its light still burning. She and Joe went in the metro to the Trocadéro, walked down the Champ de Mars, then,
back at the Etoile, found themselves in a small nightclub with an American band, where they drank a bottle of red wine. Joe had missed the last train back to his base at Versailles,
so
only 1 answer was possible but it was not a great success due to my inadequacy.

From this, I deduce that my mother lost her virginity to Major Joe Darling in the Hotel Bedford, Rue de l’Arcade, Paris, on 20 May 1945, twelve days after the war in Europe ended.

I savoured my mother’s descriptions of Paris then and I thought of her undermining remark to me years later, that Paris, which she knew I loved, had ‘lost its
soul’ because of the German Occupation. As I read of how she traipsed about next morning after only one hour’s sleep – Joe had had to leave early to see his boss, General
Eisenhower – I was curious to see more of that post-Liberation Paris, through her eyes.

May 21st 1945. I had no coat and it was raining and it made life awkward, but was determined to go out just the same – walked past the Madeleine (missing the
way and was helped by 2 Americans) down to the Rue de Rivoli. All the shops were shut as it is Whit Monday. In the Place de la Concorde, there were a few wooden barriers stacked up and the statues
representing the main cities of France were scarred and looking rather dilapidated, some of the columns at the foot of the Crillon were scarred too and some windows broken, there were also marks of
m/gun fire on the walls. On the corner of the Rue de Rivoli and the Concorde were some plaques on the wall with wreaths of flowers at their feet, giving the names of various people ‘Mort pour
la Patrie’ and the dates, one of them a French nurse shot by the Germans in Sept 1944. I walked right down the Rue de Rivoli under the colonnades and thought of the first time I came to Paris
and stayed in the Meurice there with Aunt Dita and Uncle Jay.

That was in April 1930, when Anne, fifteen, had toured the South of France and Italy, first staying one night in Paris. How different the French capital had been then!

She went on:

The fountains were playing in the Tuileries Gardens – I saw v few civilians and nobody nicely dressed – practically all American soldiers and a few
French. Bought some post cards as that was the only shop I found open – the statue of Jeanne d’Arc has been newly painted in gold paint. There is quite a different atmosphere in Paris
as to in Brussels somehow, it seems rather apathetic and a bit hopeless, but I love it still. Came back to the Concorde and walked down to the river, a few boats were going up and down, but for the
first time in my life I saw nobody fishing. I looked up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, then walked up there, a few people were sitting outside the cafés, practically all the
traffic was military and there was not much of that – the Germans took all the taxis and buses when they left . . . Met Joe at the St Augustin Mess for lunch – he was in bad form and so
was I. Phoned British Army Staff, who to my amazement told me that they were flying in spite of the rain and that there had been 2 cancellations so I could go, the lift boy at the Bedford was
rather sweet and a great help. Walked to the Vendome in pouring rain and then went out to Le Bourget in the bus . . . It was the greatest luck that I ever caught up with Joe. He had planned to come
up to Brussels to see me this weekend and couldn’t make it as he had to see the General!

Despite Joe being
in bad form
the morning after, seeing him had done her good. She returned to Brussels in a much better mood. She continued going out with her Belgian
friends – Yseult de Jonghe, who told Anne that, being half-Jewish, she felt ‘international’ – and Yseult’s aristocratic friend Solange de Borchgrave, who, like Anne,
had worked throughout the war. Then there were the Jacquets, Gigi, Titi and their brother Raymond, who flirted with Anne.

Yseult’s mother had told Anne that her family had friends and relations still in the camps, but Anne seems to have been ignorant of what was going on in them. Then, on 25 May, she was
shown some photographs of Buchenwald concentration camp.
I seem to have so little imagination these days, that horrors just don’t seem to register and I can’t believe the
photos are real people somehow. Not having people we know (thank God) in these camps makes it even more difficult – the things they did though seem quite incredible and amount to sexual
sadism of the worst description.
It seems odd that my mother associated the concentration camps with sexual sadism. I also wonder if, in her lack of a horrified reaction, she was
displaying again her escapism. For the diary quickly moves on, to gaiety; that evening Raymond Jacquet took her to a club called L’Elysée, then to a restaurant where she had
the best dinner I have eaten since the war, there we danced until about 2, then to a night club called the Kasbah, where a Russian man sang beautifully, and lastly to the
Habanera.

Around 4 a.m., at the Habanera, Raymond told Anne that he wanted either to marry her or to sleep with her –
it was phrased in such terminology that I didn’t know from
Adam which he meant!
She went out again with him the following night, after dining with his family, but does not record him repeating his ardent request of the night before.

All this male admiration, from Lew, from Raymond and from Joe, and in particular the tender love letters that Joe wrote her, made Anne more cheerful. In her job –
this Air
Disarmament racket
– she was also happier, writing proudly of how she had
got things straight in our little section
and she was pleased to hear that she
was entitled to three medals – the 1939–45 Star, the Defence Medal and one for the British Liberation Army –
as I was here before VE Day.
She added that
she was particularly pleased about this last one, as very few WAAF officers would have it and she and Betty Wickham-Legg would be the only two in Air Disarmament who would qualify.

On 2 June, Joe suddenly appeared in Brussels and stayed for three days; they went to the RAF Officers’ Club, then to the Habanera, where they met Titi and Gigi Jacquet with two male
escorts. The following day, Anne and Joe went to a procession in honour of St Gudule, the first time that the locals had been allowed to hold this ceremony since the Occupation. Anne delightedly
described it all:

little girls in long white veils and white dresses, small choir boys in red and white singing . . . apostles, others dressed as angels with plum coloured wings . .
. Christ represented with a Crown of Thorns carrying the Cross. Mass was celebrated outside . . . at one stage the whole square knelt and incense drifted round the square. The whole thing might
have been in the 15th century and when an American fighter flew over quite low, it looked incongruous.