The Tartan Pimpernel E-Book

Donald Caskie

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 469

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

An inspiring true story of courage and sacrifice. This is the remarkable story of Donald Caskie, minister of the Scots Kirk in Paris at the time of the German invasion of France in 1940. Although he had several opportunities to flee, Caskie stayed behind to help establish a network of safe houses and escape routes for Allied soldiers and airmen trapped in occupied territory. This was dangerous work, and despite the constant threat of capture and execution, Caskie showed enormous resourcefulness and courage as he aided thousands of servicemen to freedom. Finally arrested and interrogated, he was sentenced to death at a Nazi show-trial, and it was only through the intervention of a German pastor that he was saved. After the war, Caskie returned to the Scots Kirk, where he served as minister until 1960. This inspiring story of selfless commitment to others in the face of extreme adversity is the legacy of a truly brave man.

Leseprobe

•  Congregations of the Scots Kirk have worshipped on the present site since 1885.

•  During World War I, the church was a fulcrum for Scottish forces and, in the course of the ensuing peace negotiations, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States of America and Prime Minister David Lloyd George both worshipped there on the same day.

•  It was here that Eric Liddell preached his famous sermon during the 1924 Olympic Games (portrayed in the film Chariots of Fire).

•  During World War II Scots Kirk minister Donald Caskie planned and organised escape routes for Allied servicemen, earning the nickname ‘The Tartan Pimpernel’, and only narrowly escaped execution by the Gestapo for his heroic activities.

•  The first edition of The Tartan Pimpernel was written by Donald Caskie to raise funds to rebuild the war-damaged kirk. In his words ‘the site is an excellent one in the very heart of the French metropolis, a little bit of Scotland in the great city’s centre’. The Reverend Caskie’s bible is still buried under a piece of Iona stone behind the communion table in the present church.

•  Sadly, in recent years, structural faults became apparent in the building. Finally, it was decided that the most economic solution would be to start again. A developer was allowed to build and sell flats in exchange for the provision of a church ‘shell’ on the same site. Although this made heavy financial demands on the congregation’s finances, the new Scots Kirk opened in February 2002.

•  The reprinting of this book will make a further and valued contribution to ensuring that the Scots Kirk Paris will continue its work on its historic site in the capital of France.

Paris, 2008

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Reverend Alan Miller, Minister of the Scots Kirk Paris and all the members of the congregation wish to express their gratitude to Gordon Caskie and the members of the Caskie family.

They are also deeply indebted to Hugh Andrew of Birlinn Limited for his generosity to the Scots Kirk Paris Appeal Fund.

This ebook edition published in 2012 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QSwww.birlinn.co.uk

This edition first published in 1999 by Birlinn Ltd

Copyright © The Church of Scotland

The moral right of Alexander Broadie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ebook ISBN: 978-0-85790-204-7 ISBN: 978-1-84341-035-5

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

FOREWORD

1 SOMBRE DIMANCHE

2 LAST SHIP FROM BAYONNE

3 THE SEAMEN’S MISSION

4 LE VIEUX PORT

5 NOCTURNAL VISITORS

6 LINES OF DEPARTURE

7 WINTER IN MARSEILLES

8 DEATH AND A TRAITOR

9 DARK SPRINGTIME

10 SECOND STOP GRENOBLE

11 THE VISITING PADRE

12 RETURNING AN M.P.

13 THE LADIES OF CHAMONIX

14 THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER

15 VOICES IN THE VILLA LYNWOOD

16 THE FORTRESS BY THE SEA

17 HOLIDAY CAMP

18 THE RUE DES SAUSSAIES

19 SILENT BELLS RING OUT

20 A TANK IN THE CHAMPS-ELYSÉES

EPILOGUE

AFTERWORD

INTRODUCTION

Mike Hughes

To those who have never known true evil, never witnessed murder or people killed simply because of their faith or political views; to those who have lived in times of relative peace, Donald Caskie may be considered merely brave. Those who lived through the Second World War will, however, understand that this minister of religion was a man of quite outstanding courage.

This book is Caskie’s own story, told in his own words. It tells of how he chose to stay in a country torn by war when the easy option would have been simply to flee. It is also a story of faith and determination in the struggle against pernicious evil. Caskie protected and assisted those trapped in a country straining under the yoke of foreign occupation and was willing to lay down his life for the sake of his fellow man.

As minister of the Scots Kirk in Paris before the fall of France in 1940, Caskie was loud in his condemnation of the Nazis. As a result, he had more to fear than many after the German invasion. After Dunkirk, Caskie joined the mass exodus from Paris and headed south. Allied servicemen, many wounded, exhausted, hungry and frightened, crammed into southern French ports.

By 22nd June, armistice was signed in the Forest of Compiègne and Marshal Pétain set up the Vichy regime. France was subsequently partitioned between the German invaders and the Vichy state. Meanwhile, from London, General de Gaulle began to rally support for French liberation.

With no further Allied ships departing from French ports, confusion prevailed. It was in this desperate situation that Caskie found his second calling. Together with a few other men and women of exceptional valour, he helped to set up a network of safehouses and escape routes which enabled Allied servicemen of all nationalities to return to British shores. Caskie himself refused many offers of safe passage.

In the seamen’s mission at Marseilles, he created a safe haven for those adrift in a war-torn land and demonstrated tremendous reserves of faith and leadership as he consoled and inspired hundreds of desperate and disoriented troops during one of the darkest periods of the war for the Allies. By July 1940 the first escapees were crossing the Pyrenees into Spain, then on to Gibraltar, and from there back to British shores.

Born on Islay in 1902, one of a family of eight children, the Rev Dr Donald Currie Caskie, OBE, DD, MA, OCF, was minister of the Scots Kirk, Paris, from 1938–1940 and 1944–1960.

Son of Neil Caskie and Margaret [Currie] Caskie, he was educated at Bowmore School and Dunoon Grammar School. He studied in the University of Edinburgh from 1923–26 and at New College, Edinburgh, from 1926–28.

Caskie was immensely proud of his island origins, and the Hebridean spirit of resolution and hardiness, passed down through generations of Gaels, helped him acclimatise to the harshness of life in wartime France. He also carried with him the Celtic gift of second sight: this uncanny ability to anticipate events was clearly a huge advantage in his wartime mission. But he was also assisted by others of different nationalities and faiths, many of whom perished in Nazi concentration camps. He worked closely with another Scot, Captain Ian Garrow, and one of the most decorated men of World War II, Lieutenant Commander Pat O’Leary, RN [General Sir Albert-Marie Guerisse].

Caskie gained official sanction to assist British civilians but was warned of the severe consequences of helping servicemen escape from France. Marseilles was a particularly dangerous place for him to operate. There was a strong presence of German and Italian spies, and the Milice, French Fascist paramilitaries, were particularly active. Many of the local police were also sympathetic to the Vichy collaborationist government.

At first the authorities underestimated Caskie’s role in the escape network, thinking he was a front for more dangerous, manipulative special agents. He would audaciously send telegrams to the Colonial and Continental secretary at the Church of Scotland offices in Edinburgh, telling of hundreds of servicemen who had reached him in Marseilles.

After mounting suspicion, however, Caskie was arrested, interrogated and banished from Marseilles. This did not weaken his resolve, and he continued his activities on behalf of stranded troops with even more vigour and commitment, bringing to his services in hospitals and prisons not just the word of God but also files, forged documents, compasses, ID cards, passes and other aids for escape. Finally imprisoned and sentenced to death, his life was saved only through the intervention of a German pastor.

Indomitable as ever after release from prison, Caskie opened a canteen for the RAF at Le Bourget airfield (the first in liberated France), and continued as visiting chaplain to military camps and prisons.

It is exceptionally difficult to compile accurate data on wartime escape. However, expert researchers in the field such as M. R. D. Foot and J. M. Langley have estimated that during World War II, somewhere in the region of 3,000 British and Dominion servicemen managed to get out of occupied Western Europe and back to UK shores. The majority of these would have emerged from France. It has been estimated that Donald Caskie had an involvement in the safe return of approximately 2,000 men, roughly two thirds of those who made the home run from France. This figure is all the more remarkable given that he found himself in this role with no preparation and nothing to trust in but God and his own instincts.

After the war, Caskie was honoured by the French government and returned to Paris, where he resumed his ministry and oversaw the rebuilding of the Scots Kirk. The foundation stone of the new building in the Rue Bayard was laid by HM the Queen in 1957. Caskie finally left France to become minister of Skelmorlie and Wemyss Bay North in 1960, and retired through ill health in 1968. He lived in the Royal Scots Club, Edinburgh before returning to the West Coast, and he died in the Royal Inverclyde Hospital in December 1983. He is buried at Bowmore on his native Islay. Obituaries spoke of his ‘selfless dedication’ to his ministry both during and after the war, whilst the Church of Scotland’s Fasti simply puts it that he was ‘engaged in church and patriotic duties in France, 1939–45’.

Contained within these pages is a tale too modest: a tale which was only revealed after years of insistence and encouragement. Despite repeated requests from post-war colleagues, Caskie never divulged his story to a public audience until this book was first published in 1957.

The Tartan Pimpernel illustrates the tremendous height to which the human spirit can soar in the horrors of war and is the fitting legacy of a man of outstanding courage and integrity.

FOREWORD

Lieutenant-General Sir Derek Lang

The Tartan Pimpernel is an apt title. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel a century and a half earlier during the French Revolution, Donald Caskie helped escapers to freedom. Unlike his predecessor, however, he paid heavily and suffered much for his courage and selfless service.

I have been invited to write this foreword as I was one of the many Donald Caskie helped in 1940. We met again after the war when I was able to thank him and pay tribute to him publicly for what he did for me and others. I still have the letter the Church of Scotland wrote to my parents telling them I was safe. Padre Caskie sent coded messages from Marseilles to Edinburgh with the home addresses of all escaped prisoners of war who came under his care. I even received a letter of relief and gratitude from my mother via him before I left the south of France.

I am delighted that The Tartan Pimpernel is republished. It is said we are too obsessed with World War II after fifty years of peace. I do not agree. There should always be a chance – indeed there is a need – for postwar generations to learn about the horrors of world wars so that they can ensure that they do not recur. But good as well as evil comes from war. Evil in war produces heroes and Donald Caskie is one of these. I was often moved to tears when reading his book again. I commend it to all, but in particular to young people.

Lieutenant-General Sir Derek Lang was Commander-in-Chief, Scotland, 1966–69 and Governor of Edinburgh Castle. Lieutenant-General Lang was saved by Donald Caskie subsequent to his escape from St Valery. He liberated St Valery in 1944 as Commanding officer of the 5th Cameron Highlanders in the resurrected Highland division. Many of those Donald Caskie saved were in the forefront of the campaign from D-Day to VE-Day.

CHAPTER ONE

Sombre Dimanche

I PREPARED for my morning service at the Scots Kirk in the Rue Bayard, Paris, with a heavy heart. The weather was beautiful and a slight haze that seemed to promise heat hung over the bridges. It could have been drifting smoke from the battles that were being fought around the city. German soldiers were driving up the valley of the Seine and the Wehrmacht, two millions strong and at the height of its power, was engulfing France. It was June 9th, 1940—a Sunday. Under a blazing sun, in their oven-like tanks, enemy soldiers, relentless and confident, smashed through villages, reduced homes to rubble and raced towards the French capital, jubilant in the belief that Paris lay defenceless before the might of their Fuehrer. So far, Paris was untouched, except by fear. It was a day when the avenues and boulevards should have been alive with gay and chattering Parisians, making the most of the Sabbath break from work. But Paris seemed dismal and dark. The sunshine, gilding the greenery of the trees in the gardens, mocked a people who knew but could not admit that defeat was imminent.

Rumour ran like wildfire through the city, false reports and tales that startled and struck horror. The Fifth Column was active and already a great exodus had begun. Cars packed with officials, private citizens, politicians and journalists made their way out of the City. Heavy lorries carried whole families and parties of neighbours, together with the pathetic conglomeration of household and personal oddments that human beings clutch in an emergency. A Siamese cat blandly grooming its whiskers sat on some luggage piled on a truck. Strapped to the back of a bicycle, ridden by a serious-looking girl, a doll stared unseeingly into space. An old woman laboured under a heavy, anonymous bundle.

Slowly in the heat, the endless snake of assorted vehicles moved on the jammed roads, all making for the ports, jerking into speed for a few moments and then halting, or returning to a sullen crawl.

Many more thousands of people, more than half the population, remained at home, clerks, working people, café proprietors, the great mass who had no other place to go. Some of them had been in the city in 1914 when the Boche advanced to within thirty miles of its outskirts. Faithful and fearless, a little obtuse and poignantly brave, they believed that another miracle would stop the new advance, that their Paris would not, could not, fall to the enemy. But the majority of Parisians knew they were imperilled, that Paris must fall, and they refused to be stampeded by Hitler’s Wehrmacht. They were prepared for temporary occupation by the enemy. All around me that morning, as I made my way to the Scots Kirk in Paris—that little bit of France which is for ever Scotland—I felt the agony of France. Five years earlier in 1935, I had been called to Paris from my quiet country parish of Gretna on the shores of the fast flowing Solway, and I had learned to love the beautiful city to which I had come. I remembered the last sermon I had preached in Gretna before my departure for France. The text was prophetic of the work that lay before me on the Continent of Europe, and in some of its cities. It was the great Call that came to the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road after his conversion: ‘Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.’ Perhaps, I thought, the purpose of my call to France is about to be vindicated, and I prayed with Rupert Brooke that God would match me with this hour, and catch my youth, and waken me from sleeping.

I chose the Psalm and the hymns and the readings with special care. As I sought out familiar faces in the congregation, my heart was full. Old, middle-aged and young friends were present. We needed the comfort of prayer, and we knew that trials and tribulations awaited all of us, especially the older members of the Kirk. But here, on that Sunday morning we felt at home—here was a happy place in this ancient European capital. We might so easily have been in Scotland.

For centuries the Hundredth Psalm has been popular with Scottish folk. Our Covenanting Fathers sang it before the Battle of Drumclog.

Almost exactly four years after the ‘sombre Dimanche’ of Paris, 1940, thousands of Scottish soldiers from the Highlands and Lowlands, from cities and crofts, would sing it again as they stood at the ready, part of the liberating invasion army of 1944. On that sunny Sabbath morning in 1940 it lifted the hearts of the Scots gathered in the Kirk on Rue Bayard.

‘All people that on earth do dwell,

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.’

A minister of the Gospel has a very special affection for his own congregation, and I wanted my people to feel strong in God, even though the world seemed to be collapsing about them. The Old Testament reading was chosen to remind them of their unfailing support: it was from the 46th Psalm.

‘God is our refuge and our strength,

A very present help in time of trouble!’

I suppose the appalling drama that was being fought out a few miles away made us tense as we worshipped. The threat was incalculable. The most fearful army of all time was marching towards us. My own heart lifted and was high when I read the New Testament lesson. Imminent peril strengthens faith and the words of the Gospel are always appropriate. I had chosen from the 24th chapter according to St Matthew:

‘And ye shall hear of wars, and rumours of war, see that ye be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation; and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines, and pestilences and earthquakes. All these are the beginning of sorrows.’

The service was nearly ending, and the walls of our little church had become like a strong hand confidently and happily holding us secure from the world. We closed with an item of praise that some have called the Scottish National Anthem. It was sung to the tune ‘Salzburg.’

‘O god of Bethel by Whose hand,

Thy people still are fed,

Who through this weary pilgrimage,

Hast all our fathers led.

O spread thy covering wings around,

Till all our wanderings cease,

And at our Father’s loved abode,

Our souls arrive in peace.’

I commended my people to God. I committed to Him the Kirk where our kinsfolk have worshipped for nearly a century and then, outside in the warm sunshine, I said au revoir to my congregation.

On the table in the vestibule lay a bunch of white heather I had brought from my native island of green grassy Islay the previous year. That heather gave me an odd certainty that all would still be well for Paris. In my heart I was certain that I would see her again before I went westering home. I closed our church.

I had to leave Paris immediately. Out of the rumours one fact was clear. Within a few days the city would be occupied by the Germans. The heroism and strength of the French and the British armies could not halt this new type of military leviathan created by a nation that prepared for war, while our countries concentrated upon the crafts and arts of peace. General Weygand announced in one of his despatches that the enemy was attacking under great smoke-screens, and something of the kind covered news reports in and out of the city during those fateful days. But we knew that the majority of minor Government officials were packing their bags, under orders to abandon the city. M. Paul Reynaud, we knew, was with the High Command, and it was a safe deduction that the Government soon must leave.

The British Embassy was evacuating. There was the hurry and flurry of departure around the buildings where our flag was still flying. Only neutrals remained. The U.S. Embassy flag was displayed and it was some consolation to know that a few friendly foreigners would be in Paris to remind Parisians that their city was not all German.

As I made my way to the manse in the Rue Piccini, I was thoughtful and preoccupied with plans for my own departure. Ordinarily, I suppose, a minister of religion, falling into the hands of enemy soldiers can rely upon their innate respect for his cloth. But my Scots respect for religion and human beings had prompted me to denounce Hitler, his works and absurd pomp from my pulpit. Hitler had elevated racial persecution into an expression of national and individual virtue, and corrupted the souls of his own people, especially the young. He lusted for power in a diabolical way, and his wicked pretensions and idolising of military ‘might’ appalled all decent men. When news of his concentration camps and atrocities reached us in Paris, I denounced them in the Scots Kirk in more than one sermon. In my first I chose the text from the Prophecy of Hosea:

‘They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind.’

Like most texts the prophecy it contained was apposite, and as always, it was fulfilled in God’s time. I could have chosen my texts more carefully for the Fifth Column was about, but my sermons had been delivered with no thought of flattering the master of the German ‘race.’ From every point of view it would be wiser to leave Paris, I decided, and make my way to the coast and from thence home to take stock of my future and render whatever service I could to my own country.

As the day went on it became apparent that I must go to Bordeaux. Our own soldiers had closed most of the roads out of Paris and stories were filtering through of enemy aircraft straffing the routes taken by escaping Parisians. There were fantastic tales of parachutists disguised in the most improbable ways landing and attacking at the least expected places. I was to discover within a few days the meaning of this new type of air warfare. In the meantime I saw the French become refugees in their own country—a country which had given refuge in former years to many victims of the Nazis and Fascists. Mussolini had declared war on us now and beset on all fronts, poignantly fleeing—as their soldiers made a last hopeless stand—the French left their homes. The refugees were oddly silent; the old men and women who trudged along behind handcarts or sat on lorries, seemed curiously, nobly reconciled, so much more reconciled than the young, who know less of life’s sorrows and so are more easily overcome by disaster. The old are surprised by joy but in adversity are more content. But one was sad for them above all, and I felt that the sunshine illuminating this most beautiful city was cruel in its warmth and comfort.

The afternoon was busy with preparations for my departure. I visited the older members of the congregation who would not be able to take flight, and bade them farewell, knowing that some I would not meet again. I deposited ten years’ accumulation of sermons in manuscript in the cellar where later they were found by a German patrol which searched the manse. I never saw them again. My concierge reported that the soldiers were uninterested in my silver but seemed particularly interested in the matter of my preaching. I have no doubt they were aware of my opinions before they arrived, for a young person, known humorously to the congregation as ‘the chiel’ among us takin’ notes,’ had been present at most of our services, assiduously jotting down notes in a large book on his knees. I had hoped I was providing him with edification but, alas, events were to show it was evidence he sought. Time was to play a strange and consoling trick upon both of us.

To the ordinary citizen a Fifth Column is an especially sinister force. You may be aware of its agents and almost certain that you know some of them personally, but in times of war, when the powers they are pledged to support are victoriously advancing, one is powerless to deal with them. The German Fifth Column was strong and active in France before 1940. It was highly organised and efficient and like an iceberg, by far the larger part of it was unseen and unsuspected in its true dimensions. We know now that it was more alert than our British Intelligence. Only after Dunkirk and with the German Army gathered in force on the cliffs above Boulogne, with the threat of imminent invasion of Britain, did we train our agents into the fierce intensity and disciplined work which they carried out after the fall of France. They girded their loins and relit their lamps.

I had locked the doors of the Scottish Kirk and to my very faithful friend, M. Gaston the proprietor of the café next door, given the key of the church for custody. With a bag on my back, and with a great sadness in my heart, I left the manse, and joined the great Exodus.

The guns at Mont Valerien, rumbling thunderously, were the accompaniment to a Paris which seemed to be entirely on the move. Unopposed enemy aircraft filled the sky and one felt they were extinguishing the light of the sun. Millions of refugees were marching, fleeing in all sorts of conveyances into the unknown, leaving the familiar places and escaping from the realities that had bound their lives. To get within a mile of any of the railway stations south of the city, Lyons, Austerlitz or Montparnasse was impossible. A rumour that the French Government had moved to Bordeaux heightened the tension. Alas, the rumour proved true, and within a week Marshal Pétain had formed a new Cabinet. After that, the military authorities were given control of the capital and Paris was declared an open city.

The Germans marched in on the 13th, a Thursday in June. I have been told that they came as if from all ends of the earth, in every street, on every road, precise and correct in their grey uniforms. There were no French men or women on the streets to greet them. The open city was deserted, vast, silent, impersonal and uncommitted. The sun was shining and birds were singing as the alien soldiers marched through the suburbs.

They mounted anti-tank guns on the bridges and posted sentries on guard at the Tuilleries. Their sense of humour did not equate their sense of history. They enforced a 9 p.m. curfew and a complete blackout, and, over the graveyard hush, the trudge of the boots of sight-seeing soldiers beat like mourning drums. Most of the theatres and places of entertainment closed. Only a few restaurants were open to feed them. Above the Eiffel Tower and over the Arc de Triomphe, the swastika was flying. One procession of French civilians was visible in public. It was under the Arc de Triomphe, quite oblivious of the flying swastika.

There at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier dozens of women wept bitterly and prayed. The passing victors gravely saluted. Behind them they had left roads littered with dead, the towns they had passed through, had been reduced to a shambles.

At twilight on the 13th, the sky was red and as the sun faded, the swastika became enveloped in darkness and the Arc de Triomphe was outlined against a fiery sky. Trains had stopped running and the clock over St Lazare had failed and stopped.

We refugees were on the march and Paris was behind us. On that early morning as I moved through the suburbs, which are so much more characteristic of a people than the centre of any great capital, I mourned for the little streets, the homes, factories, shops and cafés and the people who must endure.

The weather changed as evening came and rain began to fall. Because, I suppose, I am a Highlander I remembered the white heather and was not too downcast. I knew that work awaited me wherever I went.

CHAPTER TWO

Last Ship from Bayonne

THE trail of refugees struggled silently through the day. We wore an assortment of our most valuable or favourite clothes—summer finery and heavier winter garb, incongruously thrown on. A very few were practically and neatly dressed as for a hike in the country. None spoke to strangers such was the common fear of the Fifth Column. As evening fell thunder rumbled in the distance and rain began to fall, gathering force and soaking us. A few stragglers from the retreating army appeared; and the chastened civilians eyed them as if they were beings from another world.

The rain fell heavily, lightning flashed across the sky and I felt curiously relieved as if the violent weather somehow put the violence of nations into perspective, and brought humans nearer to human stature, small created creatures whose arrogant brutalities were being played out within their own small world. I halted late in the afternoon and gazed back towards Paris. The city was dead and silent.

The ordinary pains of life, such as being footsore and hungry I gladly accepted, they seemed to be a cross for me to bear, but I was utterly exhausted when I arrived at the village of Sceaux near the Chevreuse Valley. By my side an old woman pushed an infant in a perambulator; farther ahead a youth trundled a very old peasant in a wheelbarrow; a dainty girl sat on a pavement, her back against a wall examining one of her feet, a light pair of city shoes lying by her side. In bundled ranks thousands of refugees lay on the village green trying to sleep in the deluge that poured down. I rested with them, sore and weary, but I could not sleep. Long before daybreak, only slightly less exhausted, I was on the march again.

I knew the direction in which I was trudging, but the events of the past few days, the previous long day’s walk and the night in the open under the rain had dazed me. Now, with the sun gathering in strength, my clothes began to steam. Many soldiers had joined us; they seemed to be sleep-marching, their eyes still seeing blazing buildings, the brutal onslaught of enemy armour, and dead comrades. They were under orders to make their way to the south, and had the right of way. Women, old and young, too tired to move out of their path, were roughly hustled aside. Many of their officers had deserted them, and there was no one in authority. Miserable, soaked in the dirt from days in the open, they struggled on, defeated and disorganised.

All through the day the dreary trek continued and at times I marched as if under hypnosis.

I covered thirty miles, and came to the town of Dourdan at nightfall. There I was slightly more fortunate than on the previous night. I found a roof for my head, in a dilapidated and half-demolished school. Into its shelter I crawled and—luxury of luxuries—found a bundle of straw, spread it carefully over the floor and stretched out for a few hours’ sleep. The sun was rising when I awoke, and took the road to Tours.

I had caught up with a straggling mass of people when German and Italian aircraft streaked down from the sky. Machine guns spat indiscriminate death. Bombs thudded and exploded all along the road. Men, women and children were blotted out of existence in a few moments. Some died by the roadside, some quietly, some sobbing, other shrieking. Far away I heard the rumbling of guns, and behind us smoke was rising from tiny villages. The French Army had been defeated, and it seemed that Hitler and Mussolini had given orders to ‘mop up’ the French civilians.

Half conscious, but curiously alert to danger, I flung myself into ditches all through the day. It is impossible to judge the trajectory of machine-gun bullets striking from the air; sometimes when the aircraft seemed overhead they went wide, sometimes inexplicably close and once, I felt them thudding into the earth a few inches from my head.

The attacks ceased in the late afternoon and the sky was quiet again. I felt a wonderful sense of peace, I revelled in the freedom from the threat of instantaneous death. The road was under my feet and I drew deep breaths and enjoyed the air in my lungs. I was marching again.

There was no food to be found anywhere, and the days that followed were hard and hungry but I had a feeling of achievement when I reached Tours.

Before looking for a lodging for the night, I found a second-hand ironmongery shop and for a few pounds bought an aged and rickety bicycle. The shopkeeper was a kind and eager man. It was reassuring to notice how enthusiastically he subscribed to the adage—business as usual—solicitous, efficient and friendly, he was so eager to please and encourage me on my way that when I pushed the old crock into the street I felt all was well. The first bomb of the heaviest bombardment Tours was to receive landed at that moment, and I jumped on that rickety old bike and raced into nowhere. Close to the banks of the Loire I noticed people dodging into an opening in a wall. I followed them and plunging downstairs, bicycle on shoulder, came to rest in a nice dark anonymous cellar. My own kind, the refugees, were huddled about me, and in the darkness I did my best to comfort them, talking to them as the city rocked under the impact of high explosive. Not far away was a ruined castle, the scene of Sir Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward which I had read as a boy and again as a young man. I hoped that it would not be hit. Bombs crashed all around us through the night and in the darkness we waited patiently. When the sun rose all was quiet and I left the cellar and pushed the old bike up the hill that lies on the south side of Tours and looked back at the city. It was enveloped in smoke, and in places tongues of flame curled through the shattered roofs. I turned my wheels towards Bordeaux.

The next night I slept in a byre with a pleasant old cow. A friendly creature and a perfect hostess. She did not disturb her guest, but philosophically munched the nourishment which, unfortunately, I couldn’t share, and consoled me with her rhythmic champing. In the morning she awakened me with a cheerful ‘moo.’

The following night I dined on grapes and had been so long without food that a fruit which might normally have made my dessert, satisfied me. Under the vines loaded with luscious fruit, I rested and felt secure. I looked up at the summer sky and considered the strange position in which the Rev. Donald Caskie was finding himself.

Like everyone, the events of the past few days had been a shock to me. My education, hopes, aspirations, my desire to serve God—what did it mean? History does not so much play tricks upon a man, as confound him so that he is suddenly launched into the violently inexplicable. Poor chap, he must rely on a rickety bicycle. Eventually he finds that God can do more with a man on a ‘rickety bike’ than a tyrant can do with armoured divisions, but the immediate impact of the situation is testing. He finds a vineyard and has a good meal under a sky that only the Provider can create, and he is reassured.

That night was heavenly. On such a night one recalls the goodness of life. My mind drifted over everything that had led to this interval in a long moment of universal peril. Parents and family love, school days and friends at Bowmore on my lovely native Islay and later at Dunoon on the bonnie banks of Clyde. Student days in Edinburgh, my first degree as Master of Arts and then the absorbing study given to theology and finally my initiation as Assistant Minister at the High Church on the Mound at Edinburgh. I remembered the companionship of friends and my thoughts were happy.

Yet, as with most reminiscences, my thoughts came back to the present. I could see again the maternal gaze of my bedfellow (the cow) of the previous night. Solemnly she munched away. What, in the name of goodness, was the good lady chewing? Cows are amiable materialists, a small and blessed compensation I suppose for lack of the greater joys that are given by God to men.

I knew what had brought me to this place on that night, and I believe I was grateful. My life had been less eventful than those lived by many of my wandering race, but it had been good. I had seen many countries and worked in places where God walked.

The years at Edinburgh had been happy, filled with study and all I strove to win. A few years before my appointment to Paris, the University of Michigan appointed me to work for a year on archæological research in the Libyan Desert, in Egypt.

I spent a Christmas night at Bethlehem. That experience made even my present predicament so much more than worthwhile. If I had only one wish for men in this life it would be that, like the young minister I then was, they should at some time be close to the birthplace of God on His birthday.

My work took me to the other side of the world after that blessed season in the Holy Land, and I had the good fortune to meet men and women of the Christian religion in the U.S.A. and Canada. I had been a prairie parson in the wheatlands of Manitoba serving—and serving is the very spirit and essence of a minister’s life—people so good and honourable, so God-fearing that only a minister can really know them.

I found such people again when I became the Rev. Alex Macara’s assistant at St Inan’s Parish Church in my own country at Irvine and during the period after my ordination and first full charge, at St Andrew’s Parish Church, Gretna Green. For three years I worked on the shores of the Solway Firth until I received my call from the congregation of the Scots Kirk in Paris. Life had been kind to me and here I was in a world, apparently hurtling itself to destruction, and the Lord had fed me with grapes.

The next day I continued on my way and at nightfall I lay down behind a stone dyke and slept undisturbed.

On the following evening I arrived at a little village not far from Bordeaux, again tired and hungry. As I rode into the main street I was puzzled to hear angry shouts behind me. I halted and jumped from the bicycle and a turbulent crowd surrounded me.

‘C’est un Boche. Un sale Boche. Tuez le.’

They seemed to mean it; angry hands stretched out at me and blows were aimed in my direction. I protested, shouting loudly that they were talking nonsense; I was no German! I was a Scot—an ally. Then gendarmes pushed their way through the threatening mob. I was handcuffed, and hustled off to the police station, vigorously demanding what charge was going to be brought against a friend whose country was in alliance with France.

‘You are a German spy,’ a gendarme said when we were inside the police headquarters. ‘One of the advance guard sent by your criminal compatriots to prepare the way.’

My eyes widened.

‘You carry the hateful symbol of Hitler and the Huns.’

He pointed to the bike that I was pushing awkwardly along with me, my hands constricted by the iron bracelets.

‘Look on the back of it. Your identity card is there. That is proof of your mission, Boche!’

I could not turn the bicycle round but when we reached the police station and my hands were free I twisted old faithful about and peered at it. There on the rear mudguard was a miniature swastika which must have been stuck on before I bought the contraption. Furiously I ripped it off. I flung it far into the garden through the open window of the station.

Outside the mob roared and clamoured on the doorstep.

‘Ask him for his identity card,’ a man cried.

I handed it over. A policeman flung my bag on the table and the crowd quietened, those nearer the door standing on tip-toes, gazing in over the shoulders of their comrades.

On top of my personal effects lay two items that immediately protested my innocence—a Bible and a kilt. It was the latter, not the Bible that did it. No German would have carried a kilt; only a Scot would pack one at a time when France was falling about his ears. My carte d’identité was handed back and all was now well. After profuse apologies by the gendarmes I was conducted to a comfortable room above the station where I slept soundly and next morning they gave me breakfast. As I rode out of the village to Bordeaux, people rushed at me again, but this time to shake my hand, and pat my back. I wobbled through them and friendly voices chorused:

‘Bon voyage!’

When I reached Bordeaux I found it a maelstrom of rumour, fear and frustration. The last ships had left the harbour and were on their way to the United Kingdom. The first, loaded with refugees packed like herrings in a box, was torpedoed as she cleared port and sailed into the Gulf of Gascony. There were few survivors. The French Government, I was told, had left for North Africa and the Wehrmacht was at La Rochelle. Bordeaux would be occupied in a few hours. I lingered by the dockside, stunned by the news and then made my way to the railway station.

I was advised to go on to Bayonne, make another attempt to take ship and if that failed I could try to escape into Spain.

My spirits sank lower, and as I cycled slowly and hopelessly away from the port, I felt spiritually and morally exhausted. During the long trek to the south, hope had buoyed me up and the thought that I’d win through to join my own kind who, I knew, would hit back at the enemy and finally defeat him. Now for the first time, I felt completely alone, isolated from all I loved, even God Himself. Fatigued beyond endurance, my journey seemed aimless and futile. I could not even find a place to sleep and as my courage ebbed away, I sat down by the side of the road and instinctively reached for my Bible.

I opened it at random and there was the twenty-third chapter of the Book of Job. The words were applicable.

‘Even today is my complaint bitter. My stroke is heavier than my groaning. Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat. I would order my cause before Him, and fill my mouth with complaints. Behold I shall go forward but He is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive Him. … But He knoweth the way I take.’

I closed my eyes, feeling comforted and my lips moved in fervent prayer; I felt God close at hand. When I opened my eyes two French soldiers were gazing down at me. They, indeed, I found were the answer to my prayer.

Their faces were covered with the stubble of men who had lived in retreat from discipline for days. They looked tired beyond human endurance, but they did not complain.

‘M’sieur seems very tired,’ said the taller, who even when in good condition must have been a gaunt man. He knelt and peered into my face; his eyes were red-rimmed but gentle and solicitous under the raw lids.

‘When we saw you sitting here we felt we ought to speak. Can we help you?’

I told them I was exhausted. My only hope was to reach Bayonne and catch the last boat to Britain. I was a Scot.

They looked at each other and smiled without speaking. They seemed to be old friends, united perhaps by the dangers they had survived.

‘Rest, M’sieu,’ said the smaller man, his strong provincial accent seeming even more friendly than the quiet detachment of his comrade.

They moved toward the centre of the road. I sat back and watched. They held up their hands stopping cars, gazing into each, reassuring the drivers and passengers. But the cars were all full, even the rich limousines and then, hours it seemed, but, in fact, only about thirty minutes later, I was comfortably seated in a large car and chatting to a kindly gentleman, who turned out to be the owner.

I gave my bicycle to the soldiers who thanked me as I clasped their hands and bade them Godspeed. It seemed I had fallen among Good Samaritans. The carowner passed me a rug and made me comfortable.

Escape was imperative for him, too, he explained, but he was not an enemy alien only. He was part of an older institution in history—a racial alien, a Jew. His whole race had been condemned to death by Hitler and the Nazis. Even worse, he was a journalist who had written of freedom, that ideal shared by all men west of the Reich. The journey to Bayonne passed quickly. We confided in each other and became friends. He drove into the town and I was grateful, but not surprised when this generous refugee invited me to join him for the night at his cousin’s home. Hospitality was a family trait and the Jewish household was full of refugees. I shared a room and large bed with four other men, one of them being my friend whose name was Abraham. He smiled as I likened myself to the beggar in the Gospels who was carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom.

The kindly soldiers, on the run from peril, and that gentle Jewish gentleman, self-sacrificing, uncomplaining, restored me to Christian contentment. When I set out for the harbour docks in the morning, I was reluctant to find a ship. Overwhelmingly I was aware that I should remain in France, that there would be work for me to do there for my country and countrymen.

The British Consulate was open, and I felt at home as I walked through the front door. I remember the feel of sea air on my face and the taste of salt in my mouth. I am an islander and the sea always suggests home and peace to me. I had friends in the Consulate, and they told me that the last ship for the United Kingdom would sail in a few hours’ time. There was a place on board for me.

To my own surprise I told them that I had decided to remain in France. My friends were not quite as astonished as I by the refusal that had come almost spontaneously from my lips. When they urged me, frantically, even angrily, to reconsider, I am afraid my replies were not very satisfactory. I hope they did not think the poor padre had gone insane for the thought would have recurred and worried them as the war prolonged. The padre was preoccupied trying to work out the processes that had led him to this peculiar decision. For days—how many days? he did not know how many—he had walked, trotted, run, halted, meditated, prayed, starved and staggered across leagues of France. He had, in a great company of unfortunates, been bombed, for the first time in his life, shot at, even besieged by a mob of his own allies, nearly burned in a cellar on the Loire, all to reach a ship.

Here was escape and within less time than he had spent en route from Paris, he might be eating a good meal and listening to Scottish voices, and willy nilly, he refused to take ship.

I left the Consulate and walked through the dockside streets. The wind from the sea was kindly and consoling and the white gulls screeched as they wheeled and dipped over the harbour. Thoughts seemed to come into my head as if from some source apart from me. I could not take ship when so many wounded men sought transport. They should have that priority which is the right of the suffering.

The last ship steamed out of Bayonne. I saw it go. Scotland had been so near and now I was cut off from it forever maybe. My heart sank, but surely I was doing the right thing? At that time I was not entirely certain but I had chosen as a Christian minister should choose in duty to his vocation. Of that I was certain.

Throughout that day I wandered among the distracted and nerve-torn people, clustered on corners, talking in groups and in cafés, their voices muted by fear of the unknown. Here and there a man or woman would laugh loudly and for a few moments one could sense a feeling of relief, like balm pouring over their anxiety and easing the tense atmosphere. The docks always produce a few happy-go-lucky souls, incapable of fear, jesters who refuse to be intimidated and such men when we feel that we are dropping down to hell, bring us back again to reality.

Night fell, a summer night when honest men might sit at their front doors and talk to their wives of the day’s work, when wives might confide to their husbands little precious things they had done and left undone. It was the sort of night when God recompenses us for the trials we think we have endured. On such a night young people walk together and dream of the homes and families they will build. But the morrow could bring an invading army and I had to decide what to do.

My decision was to escape into Spain and I turned my back on the harbour, walked through the town, and climbed up into the hills, walking in happy exhaustion along dark winding roads until I came to a tiny Basque village called Cambo Les Bains. There I prayed for further guidance. I was sure that it would be given by Him who had promised to guide all those who put their hand in His, through each perplexing path of life.

CHAPTER THREE

The Seamen’s Mission

THE little village where I rested was in the Basque country and it seemed on that summer night a perfect haven. I walked along the main street until I found an hotel, and was shown to a room by the night porter. Before sleeping I prayed, as I had prayed now for hours, asking for a sign. I slept well into the morning and awakened at a late hour.

There was a new Government in Bordeaux which had surrendered to the Germans. The village where I stayed was not peaceful, and there was no escape for its inhabitants. The traditional threat of the Boche had become an imminent reality. At any time they expected its outriders to appear on the road.

The spokesman of the Bordeaux Government was Marshal Pétain. His voice added the last touch of bitter irony to France’s tragedy. The Victor of Verdun, that invincible warrior who had proclaimed ‘They shall not pass’ and kept his word at a terrible price, had capitulated. He now led a Government of refugees, and a decision to accept defeat was made after acrimonious debate at a meeting held in a police station. There were men present who would have died fulfilling the promise Churchill later made—’We will fight in the streets and on the beaches.’ The French knew the Boche in a way that the British and Americans would never know him. In the past he had marched into France, and the taste of defeat lingered in their mouths and they hated it.

Beyond the village backwater, Frenchmen were still fighting; companies severed from a great army, disorganised but brave, were hopelessly struggling to keep the enemy from final victory. Ruthlessly the Wehrmacht stamped them out. The battle was soon to be over and all that remained, the government realised, was to acknowledge defeat.

I lingered in the streets of the village that morning and felt a fierce and stubborn fatalism close in on me. History was being made, and the worries of ordinary men are of little account at such times.

After the first broadcast by the Marshal, the news spread rapidly, but so confused were reports, that people kept on the move, still trying to escape. We heard of German soldiers satirically showering refugees with looted foodstuffs and of the owners of marooned limousines being offered petrol, stolen from French units, by cynical Teutonic ‘old soldiers.’ People had taken flight in despair. They had built homes, had lived to the ritual of hour to hour, day to day, and year to year jobs and careers; and now they were adrift, not knowing where to rest, or where to go.

The new leader of the French people offered something like death. That he, Marshal Pétain, was the spokesman of defeat made their condition more appalling. The Marshal was old and senile and bearing a burden that should have been the responsibility of men half his age. Well-meaning, confused, confronted by complex problems when he was contemplating death, he was simply an old and tired soldier who thought he was saving France when he was sacrificing her. The free French were escaping to Africa and London. The fighting French had begun to rally, but the ordinary people of France, in that miserable hour, were aware only of defeat.

I was standing outside my hotel in Cambo les Bains, a few hours before the Germans marched into the village, feeling I must leave, impelled by a force that was inexplicable. The problem that perplexed me was, which way was I to go. If I went on foot towards the Free France side of the demarcation line, I would most certainly have been overtaken by the enemy. At that moment, two cars drove up and stopped outside the hotel. They both had British plates. There were two occupants in the first car, a French gentleman of Jewish extraction, and an English lady. The occupants of the second were a Russian Princess, her son, and a very old lady, the Princess’s mother. I immediately recognised one of them. We had often met in Paris in social, artistic, and intellectual circles, and we both had mutual friends. While I was still staring at my friend in amazement, I heard him say, ‘My God, Donald Caskie. What are you doing here, and the Germans only a few miles away? We’re making for the other side of the demarcation line.’ ‘Then I believe you’re the answer to my prayer,’ I replied. ‘Of course we are,’ rejoined the Russian Princess from the car behind. ‘Come with us. We have room for you.’

Rushing back to the hotel, I paid my bill, ran to my room, grabbed my bag, stuffed my belongings into it, and in a few minutes, I was in the company of friends in my hour of need. The cars hastened towards the demarcation line which separated Vichy France from occupied territory. We were just in time, for a few hours later Cambo les Bains was occupied by the Germans, and the bed that I had slept in the previous night was occupied by a German high-ranking officer. After a long drive we reached Marseilles.