The Horror of Love (21 page)

Finally, on the afternoon of 6 June, De Gaulle spoke on the radio. He talked of the supreme battle that France was now facing and the ‘sacred duty of the sons of France to fight the enemy with all the means at their disposal’. His endorsement of Allied authority was vague but sufficient. ‘The orders of the French government and by the French leaders it has named for that purpose [must] be obeyed exactly. The actions we carry out in the enemy’s rear [must be] co-ordinated as closely as possible with those carried out at the same time by the Allied and French armies.’

Between 6 and 12 June, by which time the invading force had succeeded in establishing a bridgehead stretching 100 kilometres along the coast and 20 inland, Churchill departed to visit the troops at Bayeux. In a rare example of misjudging the press, he did not invite De Gaulle to accompany him. Both the newspapers and the Commons were indignant on De Gaulle’s behalf. With the exception of the Netherlands, the governments-in-exile in London now recognized De Gaulle, and there was also pressure from the intelligence services, who reported that the only name being heard in France was the general’s. Churchill’s attitude to De Gaulle at this point was shamingly truculent. He conceded that the general should be permitted to land and be treated courteously, but explained to Anthony Eden that no meetings ought to be held or crowds encouraged to gather. De Gaulle’s principal biographer notes: ‘Let it be remembered that the person in question was the head of a government of a country whose armed forces were fighting in the war, whose maquisards were everywhere giving their lives to help the Allies’ advance,
and whose people, in many places, were being massacred by way of reprisals for the landing.’
²

On 13 June, Gaston boarded the destroyer
Combattante
with Vienot, Koenig, Boislambert, d’Argenlieu and De Gaulle. They sailed the next morning, landing just after noon near Courseulles. De Gaulle seemed withdrawn and glum, though he explained later that he had been too choked with emotion to speak. One of his entourage tried to start a conversation by observing that it was four years since the Nazis had entered Paris. De Gaulle’s laconic response? ‘They made a mistake.’ Gaston’s reaction was more romantic: ‘I picked a rose at Bayeux. It stayed a long time on my night table as a message of sweetness and hope.’

Otherwise, the first footsteps on French soil were something of an anticlimax. A few old ladies dressed in black appeared and failed to recognize De Gaulle, two bicycling gendarmes dropped their
vélos
in surprise when they realized whom they were speaking to. For his own part, Gaston knew that the day was won when he spied the scuttling cassocks of the bishops of Lisieux and Bayeux fluttering down the beach. The party was received enthusiastically at Bayeux, where the crowd soon warmed up when they understood who was addressing them, but for De Gaulle it was Isigny that provided the most poignant and sobering sight of the day. The Americans had taken the town and De Gaulle’s jeeps were obliged to drive through the wreckage from which bodies were still being dug out. Despite the intense emotions of the day, it was no time for triumphalism.

Gaston departed for Algiers with De Gaulle on 16 June to prepare for the anticipated visit to Washington. Churchill was still smarting from the quarrel, but Eden and Vienot had continued their discussions and arrived at a consensus, reported in a letter from Vienot of 30 June, which seemed to promise a tripartite agreement of recognition of the provisional government, a categoric assertion of French sovereignty, the affirmation of the provisional government’s equality with that of their allies and the dismissal of the concept of ‘supervision’ by the commander-in-chief. Yet from the moment the plane touched
down on US soil, it was clear that Roosevelt remained unconvinced. In a snubbing gesture worthy of Louis XIV, De Gaulle was met with a seventeen-gun salute, as accorded to a high-ranking military leader, as opposed to the twenty fired for a head of state. Although the military commanders Marshall, King, Arnold and Vandegrift were summoned to welcome him, Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles were conspicuously absent. Hull awaited him along with Roosevelt at the White House, whence he was conducted in what could only have been a display of outright malignance by Admiral Leahy, the former ambassador to Vichy. Roosevelt greeted his guest in French, and then, in case anyone had missed the point, offered tea to De Gaulle, suggesting that Leahy might prefer Vichy water. For a moment, it was unclear whether De Gaulle intended to leave the room or assault the President of the United States in his wheelchair. Gaston clenched his hand around the General’s arm. A frigid cordiality prevailed throughout the dinner, where Gaston remembered the only thing worse than the food was the orchestra, but discussions did begin the following day, 7 July.

Waiting for love: Nancy spent five hopeless years ‘engaged’ to Hamish St Clair Erskine.

Nancy’s wedding to Peter Rodd – handsome, feckless and famously boring.

Gaston Palewski, ‘the Colonel’, Nancy’s great love.

The Connaught Hotel – Nancy and Gaston were caught here together and it remained a codeword ever after.

Rue Bonaparte. Gaston’s beloved flat was sequestered as punishment for his having joined De Gaulle.

Immortal in France, General De Gaulle’s speech of 18 June 1940 was not thought worth recording by the BBC.

Piccadilly and Leicester Square: Nancy’s eyewitness accounts provide a devastating description of the Blitz.