He got up and went to the rail, wearing his life jacket. He closed his eyes and smelled the morning fog. He found the face of his parents in his mind, on the morning of May 7 so long ago. He promised them no more. This would be his very last trip over the pond, and he thanked the gods for the safety of his thirty-third voyage.
June 11, 1940
SS George Washington, At Sea
“T
en minutes” was the signal that came as the ship came to a full stop at sea. The first officer on the bridge frantically signaled to the U-boat. “American, United States.”
“Ten minutes,” a terse response came back.
“Don’t they see the flags?” the captain said.
“The lights are on, I checked,” the first officer said.
“Keep signaling,” the captain said. He then walked back to the panel with the watertight door switches that had already been activated. He then switched over the large toggle switch to the ship’s alarms.
Nigel awoke to the alarm ringing throughout the ship. He quickly put on his life jacket, as did the four other men piled into a cabin meant for two. The hallways filled with passengers in pajamas and nightgowns.
“May I have your attention, please: All passengers muster to the lifeboat stations,” blared over the intercom. The ship’s sirens grew louder up on the boat deck in the early air of just after five in the morning.
People spoke in hushed tones, only a few words to each other. Nigel walked from his cabin into the hallway and made his way to the main staircase. He exited onto the port promenade deck. The lifeboats had been swung out and the doors had been opened already. It was almost as if he never stopped moving or even needed to wait as he stepped onto the boat on the ship’s side, sliding over and making room for two women and a teenaged boy.
“Can’t they tell we are American? We have flags on the side of the ship, for fucking crying out loud!” the second officer said as he came across the bridge from the port side.
“Get this out now. It is our position,” the captain said to the radio officer.
“What is the time? Are they going to warn us before they fire?” the first officer called out on the bridge.
The only noise Nigel could hear was the wind, and it was gentle. The sound of the ship alarms seemed to disappear, as if his mind had shut them off. People moved around in the boat a bit. Some cried, though they tried not to be heard. There seemed to be just this sense of destiny about everything. And time seemed to fall away. People moved and sat together. He had never seen so many people do one thing so quickly without saying but a few words.
“Clear to go. Sorry,” came back from the German U-boat.
“Full ahead.” The captain called out. The ship’s telegraph cried out with a series of bells as the officer moved the handles forward to full ahead.
“That’s it? They stop us, threaten to blow us to the sky, and then clear to go?” the first officer said.
“I don’t care. Maybe they thought we were a Greek or French ship and that is why they stopped us. I am just thankful now they can see those flags,” the captain said.
“Are the passengers back onboard?” the captain asked twenty minutes later.
“No, sir, most are still in the boats,” the first officer answered back after returning from the wing bridge.
“Well, let them stay a while, I suppose,” he said, a sort of bemusement on his face.
“I think they will, sir. They seem to like it in the boats right now,” the officer said, looking out toward the sea.
“No harm. If it makes them feel better, let them stay,” the captain mumbled to himself.
June 12, 1940
Loire Valley, France
The train broke down about eighty miles out of Paris. At first they thought it was going to get going again but, soon, a line of German fighter planes spotted the train on the tracks. As the planes dived in, bullets pierced through the roofs of the cars as people piled out of the windows, the rear and front doors and ran in all directions to take cover in nearby fields. Marc and the others slid almost like cats off the top of the cars and onto the ground around the tracks.
“Under here! Don’t run!” Allen called out. Marc threw himself under the train on the tracks.
“Is this safe?” Marc heard someone ask.
“No, but safer than out there,” Allen said next.
“What if they bomb the train?” Marc asked.
In front of them, a woman yelled in pain and held her leg, which had snapped just above the ankle.
“Then we don’t have to worry about the war anymore,” Allen said. He scooted out from under the train, grabbed the woman under the arms and started to drag her back as she screamed in pain.
Another plane dived alongside the train and he could hear the guns shooting as they approached. Above him, he heard several yell in pain as bullets ripped through the cars. It sounded as if two men fell to the floor inside the coach. The bullets reached the engine and he could hear steam hissing from the boiler that had been hit.
The planes did not come back for another run. People slowly started to get up and walk out of the fields. Some were shouting for friends, relatives, or children. Marc and Allen, along with all the others, climbed out from under the train car. Everyone in the engineer’s cabin was dead. A woman sobbed in front of a small child. Marc could barely bring himself to look but was relieved it was not the boy from Belgium.
The woman Allen had dragged no longer screamed. He did not see the wound, and was not sure if she was hit before or after she broke her leg. The front of her dress, however, was soaked in blood. Sister Clayton offered some prayers over her body before they gathered their bags and set out on foot across the field toward the road where other refugees walked and pulled carts.
“Are you scared?” the Belgian boy asked Marc as he walked behind Allen.
“Hey, there you are. Where is your family?” Marc asked, faking a smile.
“We are all safe,” the boy said, his dog by his side.
June 13,1940
Lisbon, Portugal
“Miss? Miss?” The man stood over Dora. At first he was gentle and then became firmer in his tone.
“Yes, sorry, I was asleep.” She looked up at him.
“Would you be ready to go right now?” he asked her quietly.
“I thought you said there were no openings?” Dora asked, perplexed by his question.
“One of the passengers who had booked ahead has not arrived yet. No others on the waiting list are here or know yet, and you have been waiting, sleeping here, and I thought I would come to you first,” the Pan Am agent said, and it was clear he was trying to be kind to her.
Dora had never flown before. She had an opportunity once to take the
Graf Zeppelin
to Europe, but decided against it and instead traveled with a group of friends back to France aboard the SS
Paris
instead. She was not sure what to expect as the large, four-engine flying boat, the Pan Am
China
Clipper
, started to move faster and faster over the choppy river, bouncing along in the water.
“Steward, question, please. We are not flying to China, right? I mean, this plane is going back to America?” Dora asked.
“Yes, of course. Oh, you saw the name on the plane,” he said.
“Yes, I don’t want to fly to China,” Dora said.
“No worry. We have had to move some of the planes off the other routes to get everyone home, miss. You are not flying to China, but back to the States,” the steward said to her in his friendly southern accent.
Even though she had not had much food during the nearly two weeks since leaving Paris, the sensation of flying did not give her any incentive to eat. Instead, she just looked out the window near her. The passengers took turns in the center lounge for breakfast and lunch.
Someplace past the Azores, over the Atlantic, another female passenger asked her, “Are you going home?”
“No, not exactly. I am going to see my sister,” Dora said after a bit of a pause.
“Are you an American?” the woman asked.
“Yes, but my home is in Paris,” Dora went on as she continued to stare out the window.
“Oh, I see. I am sorry,” she said.
“Yes. It is a damn mess,” Dora murmured over the drone of the plane’s engines.
“Yes. It most certainly is.” The woman’s voice held a hint of sadness.
“Are you going home?” Dora asked.
“No. I am going to visit a friend.”
“I see.”
About an hour later, after another round of passengers took dinner in the center compartment, the woman said to Dora, “Aren’t you hungry? You should eat.”
“Oh, I will be fine. I am just not feeling very social or hungry,” Dora lied. She had become angry stewing over the storm the woman’s questions awoke inside her. Dora had been running for two weeks, never looking back at Paris, her friends, home, or the loss. Her sadness turned to anger, and the anger felt like a bowling ball in her gut.
The woman looked out the same window and then casually asked Dora, “Are you Jewish?”
The bluntness of the question shocked Dora, then she thought about it for a few minutes. “If by Jewish, you mean that I have lost everything including my home and friends then, why, yes, I am.”
“Yes, so am I,” the woman said, looking out the window.
Dora looked at the woman with a hesitant glance. The woman did not look back from the window.
“I have rebuilt before, and I will do it again. I am beginning to believe that those who are possessed by nothing possess everything, most of all freedom. I am sorry if I sounded curt. It’s just been very hard. Up until now, I thought I was fleeing France, but actually, it feels more like I have been pushed out,” Dora said.
“I know what you mean.” The woman cracked a forced smile.
“Are you going to eat?” Dora asked her, for she did not go with the others for dinner when the steward came through the cabin.
The woman just shook her head ever so slightly, and she remained like a granite statue for the rest of the flight.
June 14, 1940
Le Mans, France
“G
et in, get in,” the soldier said from the top of the truck.
“Where are you chaps heading?” the lost soldier asked.
“The same place you and everyone else are going. Away from France,” Allen answered back.
It was early yet in the day and the soldier had just dropped off a group of men, so the truck was empty. Marc, Allen, the president and the two sisters from the YMCA, as well as the other Belgian refugees, climbed into the first truck. The rest piled into the second and third trucks. The convoy had gone out to retrieve the unit, which had gone missing after the train broke down.
The roads were clogged with all sorts of abandoned trucks and cars. As the truck turned a corner just after Fontaine-Milon, heading next to Angers, Marc never expected to see a group of elephants moving down the road. The truck slowly maneuvered around the herd as it marched along with the circus members, encircled by hundreds of refugees.
“What the bloody fuck,” Allen murmured.
“I, I cannot …” Marc then stopped and looked toward the sky. Others then started to turn and look in all directions for the source of the sound.
Five bears walked in a line, each linked to the other. Behind the bears, a few families followed who did not appear to be with the circus. Back further from the bears were two horse-drawn carriages with several lions in them. And then there were the towering elephants that were mixed in between the bears, lions, and other refugees. Mahouts guided their elephants down the road. The elephants seemed to hold the space for the group with a stately consciousness.
Everyone seemed to be connected and lead by them as they walked with a certain determination and careful grace. The expressions upon their faces seemed to mirror the exact somberness of the refugees. Walkers would part for the elephants as the circus made its way down the crowded road. Then everyone began to scatter from the road in every imaginable direction, though no one seemed to know exactly from which direction the sound of the planes was coming.
“Get out! Take cover!” the driver yelled. Marc looked for Allen when he hit the ground. Then he looked at the others running to find a spot to hide. He turned, and just then, a Russian sun bear slammed Marc to the ground, pushing the air out of his lungs, as it ran over him and into the woods.
Within a few minutes, two elephants laid dead. The bears ran in every direction. One of the horse-drawn lion carriages had overturned and had crushed a boy, maybe six years old, and his father.
Marc rolled over on the ground and tried to find his breath. They must have thought those elephants were trucks, he thought to himself, because there could be no other reason to fire upon a traveling circus.
One of the truck’s engine compartments hissed with the steam of the shot-up radiator. Marc huddled next to the soldier, who trembled violently. The Dutch girl sobbed and shook her mother.
“Can it be fixed?” Allen asked the officer as they opened the truck’s hood.
“I think so. It’s just a hose and we have some tape,” he said as he pulled a kit out of the truck’s cab.
Galway, Ireland
June 14, 1940
SS George Washington, At Dock.
Nigel sat at the bar of the SS
George
Washington
where it was stopped in Galway, Ireland, to take on more passengers.
“Need another, friend?” the bartender asked.
“Pass. I have had enough. Do you need anything?” Nigel asked.
“On the house, friend, captain’s orders.”
Nigel left the bar on the aft boat deck. He walked to the rail overlooking the stern section of the ship. Sailors struggled with hoisting rafts up over the rail from the dock. On the other side, three rafts were stacked upon one another, lashed down to the deck.
As he walked forward along the deck, he passed a small group of workers with the ship’s engineer. Nigel stopped on the deck and looked back to see what they were working on. The hatch to a service panel had been removed, and cables ran from the panel up over the deck to the top of the roof.