Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [51]
Neither Sylvia nor Adrienne had a place in the collaborators’ literary milieu, and they despised those who did–apart from Jacques Benoist-Méchin. They had known Benoist-Méchin as a teenage music student, who played in George Antheil’s orchestra when Antheil was living above Shakespeare and Company. A writer and translator as well as a musician, war veteran Benoist-Méchin came to Odéonia in 1920. Adrienne wrote of him in 1926, ‘He was there when [Paul] Valéry read us, in a corner of the bookshop, the pages of Eupalinos, which he was about to hand over to his publisher. One day he showed us, jubilant, a copy of Partage du midi [Break of Noon] that he had written by hand. We saw him translate fragments of Ulysses for [Valéry] Larbaud, who was preparing his lecture on Joyce … No young man was so much the son of the house as he was … I am very proud of our son.’ She did not write what became of that pride in January 1941 when his ministerial-level appointment as Vichy’s secretary general for relations with Germany put him in daily touch with the Nazis.
EIGHT
Americans at Vichy
POLLY PEABODY WAS A RAVISHING, 22-year-old ‘all-American girl’ from East 57th Street in New York. The blonde-haired society beauty spoke perfect French and German, having studied in France, Switzerland and Germany for much of her childhood. Defeating the Nazis became her obsession from the moment the war began in September 1939. Seeking to play a part, she volunteered to drive ambulances in France for Anne Morgan’s American Relief Service. Miss Morgan, who had returned to Paris from New York in March 1940 to direct humanitarian operations, rejected Polly’s application on the grounds that she was too young. Undeterred, Polly applied to the American-Scandinavian Field Hospital and was accepted for medical work in Finland. ‘About that time,’ she wrote, ‘stories of Finland’s gallant resistance were flooding New York.’ Stalin’s Red Army, allied with Hitler, was invading its neutral neighbour, and the Finns fought hard to defend their independence. ‘Finno-hysteria broke out in New York, like a violent rash on a baby’s face … “My deah! you simply MUST come to my little ‘do’ for the Finns”.’ The American-Scandinavian Field Hospital’s trustees, no doubt recognizing determination when they met it, made her their Assistant Secretary. Polly set sail for Norway in March 1940, one of ‘twenty-eight wild Americans’ including Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, ‘the Black Eagle of Harlem, a negro who claimed he was going to teach the Finns how to fly’. When her ship docked in Norway, the Germans invaded the country–the first stage of an operation leading to the Nazi conquest of Denmark, Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium and France. She escaped to Sweden, Russia and Switzerland. By the time she caught a train over the border to France, it was a German-occupied country.
‘At each station,’ Polly wrote, ‘a huge pile of twisted and rusting metal was dumped beside the tracks. Old bedsteads, pipes, etc.–all intended to make guns for the defence of France.’ On one of the many buses she took through the ravaged countryside after her train broke down, she overheard a disheartened French soldier moan, ‘Hell, we’ll be just as well off under German rule as under our own.’ That was too much for Polly Peabody.
I turned on him like a she-wolf. The discussion grew louder and louder, and pretty soon everyone had joined in on my side. Nobody suspected that I wasn’t French until I made my fatal mistake:
‘I, an American, am more patriotically inclined towards your country than you are …’ I shrieked, in a fit of impatience. There was a silence followed by an explosion. This time the positions were reversed. Everyone attacked me.
‘An American! … if you are patriotic about France as all that, then why didn’t you send us some guns instead of a lot