Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [55]
On enlisting, Arthur had been sent, with another Englishman, to join a small intelligence unit under George de Symons Barrow. Accompanying “the long retreat,” Arthur and his intelligence comrades went back and forth from the front line to their commanding officers, gleaning as much as they could about the relentless Germans advancing behind them. Intelligence work was difficult, often carried out at night and frequently very dangerous, as revealed by the two anecdotes below. George Barrow wrote that while retreating with the army:
The division crossed the Oise at Compiègne [close to Etienne’s château], and occupied high ground . . . We were assured that all the bridges . . . had been demolished. I went at night with Capel to make sure that no . . . Germans had got across in boats by other means.
We were very hungry, and going into a baker’s shop . . . got a newly baked loaf of bread ... I found a room in a workman’s cottage and Capel found one next door. It was 1 a.m. Very tired, I took off my belt, haversack and sword and threw myself fully dressed on the bed. At 4 a.m. the owner . . . came to my room and said: “The Prussians are in the village . . .” I replied: “Impossible: all the bridges are broken.” He said, “It’s true, and I’m off ”. . . I did not believe him, and was desperately in need of sleep... Then I thought, “It’s not good enough to run the risk . . .” and dragging myself off the bed went to the door. I heard some shots and bangings at doors . . . at the far end of the street. At the same moment, Capel rushed out. I got my belt and haversack, left my sword—a useless weapon—behind in my hurry and we jumped into the car, which was facing the wrong way. A thick mist had come up from the river and the engine was cold. It seemed like hours before Capel could start it. Then the car had to be turned in the narrow street. Meanwhile, the door bangings drew closer and closer. At last the car was got round the corner, a hundred yards or less away. One or two shots whizzed close over our heads before we were hidden in the mist.4
Before the great retreat finally came to an end, near Paris, Arthur and Barrow experienced another narrow escape when setting off one night in Arthur’s car to discover the proximity of the enemy. As they drove out of a wood, to their horror a German brigade crossed the road only three hundred yards ahead of them and joined up with several regiments in the fields. Incredulous at not being spotted, Arthur backed stealthily into the wood and turned the car around. Barrow wrote:
I had my eyes fixed on the enemy during the process of reversing and turning and was equally astonished and relieved that not a single German looked in our direction. At last we got around and away to safety. Had we been half a minute earlier or the German brigade half a minute later, we must have met and Capel and I would have seen no more of the war.5
In fact, Arthur and Barrow would both live to see a good deal more of this war.
Behind the lines, forced as the revelers at Deauville had been to face this thing that so many of them had assiduously avoided, people panicked and left the resort. On the fourteenth day of that momentous August, normally the height of the season, Elisabeth de Gramont described how The Normandy, the hotel where Gabrielle and Arthur had stayed, was half closed and The Royal was going to become a hospital. Luxury shops were closing, rental agencies were empty and foreigners were disappearing: “Cars are requisitioned, the price of petrol is going up, and horse-drawn cars demand a hundred francs to go up