Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [81]
How the Americans succeeded in getting him to England, I cannot say. I believe there were two stages, of which one was Vichy. But the thing I am sure of is that during eighty days, everyone in the hospital spoke only of this question and the way in which the American ambulance had tricked the Germans at the Line of Demarcation, of his arrival at Vichy and, two or three days later, not more, the completion of his trip in England. How the Germans knew nothing of this story astounded me. The blind man, isn’t he perhaps someone who does not want to see?
The officer’s escape in an American ambulance revealed the extent to which other hospital employees were aiding Sumner Jackson in the Resistance. They did this despite the ever-present prospect of torture and the firing squad.
Another gravely wounded French soldier told Guillon that, in addition to his war injuries, he had gonorrhoea. ‘The American doctor who took care of him with sulfa drugs at a very high dosage, trying the lot on everything, accomplished an exploit in healing. We learned that three weeks after he left the hospital, he was in London.’ The American doctor was undoubtedly the hospital’s genito-urinary specialist, Sumner Jackson.
On Friday, 11 October, General of the Army Charles Huntziger, who had signed the Armistice for France in June and was now minister of war at Vichy, presented the hospital with the Order of Merit and the Croix de Guerre for services to the wounded during the Battle of France. Sumner Jackson, Elisabeth Comte and Edward Close were cited by name. ‘Operating by day and by night,’ the citation read, ‘the hospital took care of an almost interminable number of wounded and undoubtedly saved a great number of lives. In direct contact with the enemy, and working in an enemy-occupied zone, the hospital continued with unflagging dedication not only to care for the wounded but also to bring aid to the prisoners.’ General Huntziger and his wife stayed for lunch, and the patients were given champagne for the occasion.
Lunch, dinner and walks broke up André Guillon’s otherwise tedious days. After six o’clock, there was nothing to do. He read books, including three that the hospital’s American staff recommended for him to understand their country: Gone with the Wind, Babbitt and a treatise on the American economy by French academic and now head of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Bernard Fay. ‘I read them,’ Guillon wrote. ‘I don’t know if I know the United States any better.’ He played chess and poker with the other soldiers. Occasionally, there was entertainment. An actor named Victor Boucher and the singer Marianne Oswald, who reminded him of Edith Piaf, came to the hospital. Miss Thierry, a nurse of French ancestry from Boston, gave them a violin concert in the library. ‘She had the grace to visit every room afterwards to play a little for those who were too injured to get up and join the rest of us at the concert. Neutral? The Americans? Oh, no. “Miss Thierry’s gesture shows us better”.’
At the end of November, the French patients celebrated the birthday of one of their comrades: ‘He was alone. He had lost his wife in the bombardment, and he was in bed with two broken legs. We obtained from outside a cake and a bottle of champagne. And we met in his room at seven o’clock.’ As they began the party, they were joined by a young Russian nurse whom Guillon referred to as Mademoiselle S. (She was probably a surgical nurse named Mlle Svetchine.) After finishing the cake and champagne, they played poker. By midnight, Mlle S. had lost all her money. One of the wounded soldiers suggested a way for her to win it back. ‘You undress,’ he said. ‘With each article of clothing you take off, we’ll place a bet for you.’ She lost hand after hand. By twelve-thirty, she had no clothes left.