The Horror of Love (15 page)

9

LE PREMIER DES GAULLISTES

G
aston Palewski had joined up as soon as war was declared. His brother Jean-Paul was mobilized with his infantry regiment in August, but Gaston requested a transfer to the air force. Perhaps his experiences at the Salon d’Aviation, where he had attended his father’s stand as a teenager, suggested that the air force might be more congenial to him than the infantry. Paul Reynaud agreed to obtain him a commission, writing to Guy la Chambre, the minister for the air force, on 29 September 1939 to request a place for his ‘close collaborator’, though with the caveat that the post should be such as would allow Gaston to remain in permanent contact with him. Accordingly, Gaston was commissioned in the reserves, and in January 1940 he resigned from his employment to take up an active commission in the 34th Bombing Squadron.

Acquiring his pilot’s licence at Villacoublay, he had his wings by 22 March and began to fly his first missions, which he reported in regular telegrams to Reynaud. At first these expeditions were no more than observational tours, or, rather absurdly, used to drop pamphlets with news of the latest papal encyclical over the Ruhr, but by May, the leaflets had been replaced with bombs. ‘Finally, ’ Gaston recalled, ‘we received authorization to bomb Germany … it was about time.’ He spoke vividly of his first night mission, of seeing a sudden light in the sky and hoping that it was a star, in which case he would live, or if not, wondering whether he would have the strength to escape his burning Amiot and plummet to the ground ‘a nocturnal animal condemned by
its weight’. He also evoked the unbearable tension as the airmen scrambled their planes, and the overwhelming relief of landing after a completed mission. He described his ‘anguish’ as the squadron flew over the battlefields of the First War, their names unbearably poignant to every Frenchman, the sight of Amiens, Arras, Sedan once more aflame ‘like great braziers’ beneath them a torture to their eyes, a hellish firework display of failure. Gaston was mentioned in dispatches on 4 June for flying a particularly dangerous mission as far as Brussels, where he saw a huge camp near the city, brightly illuminated, which he rightly surmised was the central supply depot for the advancing German troops. In an infuriating vindication of everything his party had been arguing for years, it was judged impossible to bomb the depot due to a shortage of air power, and the enemy supply line remained intact.

On 5 June, the Germans launched the final phase of their attack. At first it seemed there might still be hope, as the Aisne, the Oise and the Somme still held, and on 6 June De Gaulle received a telephone call from Reynaud asking him to join the government as under-secretary of state. As soon as he arrived at Rue St Dominique, De Gaulle began to denounce the spirit of defeatism that prevailed among the ministers, arguing passionately that Pétain should be excluded from the government. He was prepared to concede that metropolitan France was lost, but insisted that the fight should continue throughout the colonies. Both Pétain and Weygand were furious at De Gaulle’s inclusion, complaining about his ‘vanity’, ingratitude and ‘boundless ambition’. Unfortunately for De Gaulle, much of this bile was poured into the ears of Sir Edward Spears, recently appointed by Churchill as his personal representative to the French government. By 8 June, the London
Times
had noticed Reynaud’s latest, maverick appointment: ‘Rather aggressively right-wing, a powerful theoretician, and an almost fanatical advocate of the massive use of tanks, he is a man with an enlightened and penetrating mind, a man of action and at the same time of dreams and abstraction.’

Churchill had the chance to inspect Reynaud’s ‘interesting innovation’ for himself on 9 June, when he received De Gaulle at Downing Street. The purpose of the visit was to cement collaboration with the British for the continuance of the war, as Reynaud, retreating from the tentative suggestions of armistice that he had made to Churchill in late May, was now emphasizing French determination to fight. He explained to De Gaulle that ‘it is a matter of convincing the British that we shall hold out, whatever happens, even overseas if necessary’.
¹
After reviewing the potential for transferring troops to North Africa, De Gaulle concluded that with the aid of the British fleet and swift action from the French navy and air force, it would be plausible to withdraw half a million men to continue the struggle. Yet De Gaulle’s first political mission as a minister was a failure. Churchill refused to countenance the redirection of the Royal Air Force to the battle for France, arguing that as the front moved further away from the British Isles, it was more efficient for RAF bombers to engage the enemy near the coast. Five German planes could be destroyed at close range, he asserted, for every one shot down far away. Nevertheless, on a personal level, the two men produced favourable reactions in one another. In his
Mémoires
, De Gaulle claimed as his first impression that:

Churchill seemed to me equal to dealing with the most arduous task, so long as it was also grandiose. His character fitted him for action, for running risks, for playing his part wholeheartedly and without scruple … From the beginning to the end of the drama, Winston Churchill appeared to me as the great champion of a great undertaking and the great actor in a great History.

He might have added that, in his own estimation, it takes one to know one.

On 10 June, back in France, De Gaulle recorded ‘a day of extreme anguish’.
²
The northern front was crumbling, the Germans had attained the Seine, Mussolini had decreed Italy’s
entry into the war and Paris was under threat. Late that night, after a bitter confrontation with Weygand, who claimed that armistice was now the only solution, De Gaulle accompanied Reynaud to Tours, where the French government was to establish itself in retreat.

They travelled through a landscape already given over to nightmare. The exodus had begun on 10 May, as the Germans advanced, when 25,000 Luxembourgeois had set out for the fragile safety of France. The stream of refugees swelled with the surrender of Belgium on 28 May and now the French were among them. As many as 25 per cent of French people are estimated to have quit their homes by June. As the cities of the north emptied, those of the south found themselves faced with impossible numbers of migrants – 8,000 at Orléans, 47,000 at Cahors, 70,000 at Brive, 100,000 at Pau. Any vehicle that could move had been dragged into service, bicycles, farm carts, perambulators and wheelbarrows as well as bronchitic lorries and elegant private cars. Railway stations were in a state of near riot. On and on they trudged, this mass of ‘terrified and miserable humanity’,
³
abandoning first their transport, when fuel ran short, then even their pathetic, hastily gathered possessions. They slept in the open, huddling in church porches and marketplaces, and, slowly, they began to starve.

Arriving at the Château de Muguet for what would be the penultimate conference of the Inter-Allied Command, De Gaulle encountered Pétain.

‘You are a general, ’ observed the marshal. ‘I don’t congratulate you. What’s the use of rank during a defeat?’

De Gaulle responded with contained distaste. ‘But Maréchal, it was during the defeat of 1914 that you received your first stars.’

‘No comparison.’

On the evening of 11 June, Reynaud, Pétain, Weygand, De Gaulle and Général Georges met their British allies, Churchill, Anthony Eden, General Spears, General Sir John Dill and General Ismay. Weygand complained vigorously about the isolation of the French army and the lack of support from the British.
Observing De Gaulle, Spears noted his calm demeanour as compared with the other Frenchmen, who ‘really looked like prisoners who had been brought out of their cells to hear the inevitable verdict’. At dinner, where De Gaulle was placed beside Churchill, the prime minister gained the impression that Reynaud would give him the command if the French lines failed to hold their present position. De Gaulle was not present at the next sitting of the meeting as he left early next morning for Rennes to discuss the possibility of establishing a redoubt in Brittany. De Gaulle was in favour of this, but the idea came to nothing due to lack of resources. He had to rush back from Brittany, arriving an hour late at the meeting at Tours, where Reynaud announced that Weygand considered an armistice necessary and that therefore the French government asked to be released from the agreement of March that year at which he and Chamberlain had each forbidden the other the conclusion of a discrete peace treaty. Pétain added his support for capitulation that evening, declaring that the government ought not to leave metropolitan France and that he, personally, was prepared to stay and share the necessary suffering of the French people, from which the country would be reborn. De Gaulle felt he had no choice but to resign, as Pétain’s wholehearted support for the armistice signalled defeat for those who felt France should continue the fight, but Georges Mandel, the minister of the interior, persuaded him it was his duty to remain in his post.

By 14 June, the French government was on the move once more. On arrival at Bordeaux, De Gaulle made a last attempt to rally Reynaud. ‘ For three days now I have seen how fast we are moving towards capitulation … I refuse to submit to an armistice. If you stay here you are going to be overwhelmed by the defeat. You must reach Algiers as soon as possible. Are you determined to do so, yes or no?’

As ever, when directly confronted by the adamantine conviction of his minister, Reynaud convinced himself that he, too, could stand firm. He charged De Gaulle to go immediately to London to obtain the help they would need for the projected
transport to North Africa. He assured De Gaulle that they would meet in Algiers. Pausing at Paimpont, where De Gaulle visited his dying mother, and at Carantec, where he saw his wife and daughters, the general made his way to Brest, where he boarded the
Milan
to sail for Plymouth, landing at daybreak on 16 June. Once at sea, De Gaulle gave the first indications of his break with the official French government line by ordering another ship, the
Pasteur
, to divert with its cargo of weapons from a French to a British port, a measure which caused several members of the Reynaud government to demand that he be courtmartialled.

As a last resort, De Gaulle and Churchill thought it might be possible to adopt Jean Monnet’s plan for an Anglo–French union in which the two countries would operate as a single political unit. De Gaulle wrote ten years later that neither he nor the prime minister had any illusions about this as a pragmatic solution, but they believed that if Reynaud could be persuaded to accept it his resolve would be stiffened in the face of the increasing pro-armistice feeling in the French Cabinet. Pétain declared the proposal no better than ‘marriage with a corpse’, and though Reynaud claimed he would prefer to collaborate with France’s allies than with her enemies, the proposal was rejected.

Colonel Palewski knew nothing of the dramas occurring within the Cabinet, but he had no intention of giving up the struggle. Along with his squadron leader, Colonel François, Gaston now took the first of the maverick steps which were to lead him to London. Without any orders, they took off for Bordeaux, arriving on 15 June and making their way directly to the Prefecture, now the headquarters of Président Lebrun. Despite managing to penetrate the council chamber, where, he later claimed, the only talk he heard was of capitulation, Gaston was unable to find De Gaulle, who had already left on his twenty-four-hour mission to London. He soon learned that the 34th Air Squadron was ordered to North Africa, with the aim of bombing southern Italy from its new base.

In the words of the editor of his
Mémoires d’Action
, Eric
Roussel, Gaston Palewski possessed an extraordinary gift, ‘the rare ability to distinguish always, with a sort of faculty of divination, not only what were the superior interests of France, but also what was most apt to serve them and to consecrate himself to their cause’.
⁴
Général de Gaulle himself put it more effectively: ‘He is always where History is made.’ Gaston had shown signs of this prescience throughout the Thirties, now he wrote a letter to the general which he cast into the whirlpool of history ‘like a message in a bottle’, uncertain whether it would ever reach its destination, but convinced of its desperate justice. ‘I have to leave with my planes for North Africa. It is an order from which I cannot extricate myself. But I am sure that you will do something. You can count on me. I will join you as soon as I can.’ It was with perfect accuracy, then, that even before the legendary broadcast of 18 June, Gaston Palewski could call himself ‘the first of the Gaullists’.

Before he left Bordeaux that evening, Gaston was able to have a meeting with the Spanish ambassador, Lequercia. He was anxious to protect his mother, who was still at Louveciennes, though he prudently gave as his reason his intention to join De Gaulle in London rather than the fact that Rose was Jewish. If the families of those who had joined De Gaulle were persecuted, he asked the ambassador, could he help Rose with a visa to Spain? Lequercia agreed to do all that was necessary, but encouraged him not to leave, declaring airily that the Germans were only ‘savages’ because they were poor. Now that they should be rich, their spirit and their methods would become more moderate. It should be perfectly possible, he continued, to live easily alongside the new conquerors of Europe. Concern for Rose forced Gaston to swallow his fury, but he could not resist remarking to the Chinese ambassador, as he left, ‘Sans doute vous allez me voir arriver chez vous?’