The Forbidden Zone 1940

Anne Angelo

Description

This is a continuation of the story of Anne Angelo, as published in the companion book: A Sprig of White Heather and a Scottish Lass. It is a heart-warming story that completely justifies the researching and writing. It demonstrates how inexorably lives can be shaped and directed by the circumstances of birth and the environment in which the formative years are spent.
Born in Invergordon, Ross-shire, in the Highlands of Scotland, to parents utter opposites in cultural and social backgrounds, education, heredity, and race—and further, tragically, in conflict since the very day of their wedding—her world until the age of twenty was one of hatred and heartbreak, fear, and disillusionment and despair.
Released at that age, by entirely fortuitous circumstances over which she had no control, she enjoyed a period of blissful living in France. The coming of the War brought an end to that.
The actions of the German Forces of Occupation against her drove her into her activities with the French Resistance.
It was inevitable she would be betrayed. She was forced to flee to the only place where she could be sure enemy agents could not reach her—her father’s house in the Scottish Highlands, where the security for the old naval base was still effective, but where she had no protection from her father’s wiles and hostile intentions.
In many ways, her story outdoes that of Hatter’s Castle. Clinging to the slender thread of the love she found in France, she endures. Until the sun shines and, in a surprising revelation, shows that motives and intents are not always what they are thought to be.

Sujets

• Autobiography
• Biography

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris AU
• Date de parution: 16 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669888390
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Forbidden Zone 1940
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Anne Angelo

Copyright © 2022 by Anne Angelo.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2022908454
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-8841-3
 
Softcover
978-1-6698-8840-6
 
eBook
978-1-6698-8839-0
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 05/16/2022
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
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CONTENTS
1.Reflections
2.The Depression Hits
3.The Threat Approaches
4.War
5.Return To Lille
6.Ambulance Driver
7.Gerald
8.Another Brush With Death
9.Husband And Wife
10.The Refugees
11.Fleeing From The German Advance
12.Paris Falls
13.The Forbidden Zone
14.The French Resistance
15.The Prison At Loos – The Cachot
16.The Stolen Car
17.Goering’s Beauty Chorus
18.British Women Give Nazi Salute
19.Gestapo Officers Come To Dinner
20.German Dirty Tricks
21.The Luftwaffe Is Mauled
22.The Kindly Wardress
23.Christmas 1940
24.The Net Tightens
25.Escape From The Forbidden Zone
26.To Safety In An Orange Case
27.Monte Carlo
28.The Last Leg
29.Invergordon
30.In Search Of Gerald

 
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
This is a continuation of my story in ‘A Sprig of White Heather and a Scottish Lass’ Very soon after Britain declared war on Germany, I returned to France, crossing the Channel in a fishing boat.
My hotel was used to billet French military personnel initially, and later, the British Expeditionary Forces, the BEF . Sometimes this resulted in me fighting for my honour, as these men, or boys as many of them still were, tried to fill a personal void in their lives.
One day as I was out driving, I collided with a British Army car. This was my meeting with Gerald, and the start of a relationship which was to grow beyond my wildest dreams.
For a time I joined the ambulance drivers, but this proved to be fraught with danger, and after two brushes with death I resigned.
Then in mid-1940, the German Army thrust down into the north of France, where Lille is situated. Gerald had to move on. Destiny was taking him from me with agonising uncertainty, but I knew I must survive and find him again, somewhere.
I had left my departure too late, and I found myself in amongst the swarms of refugees. After four days of being under air attack, being diverted, and driving through razed towns strewn with the bodies of the civilian population, I finally reached the comparative tranquility of Paris. But this in turn fell, and once again I found myself fleeing, this time to Brittany. I tried desperately to get a ship to England, but I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and despaired as I saw my last chance disappearing out to sea.
With the German occupation established, civilian life in France was initially encouraged to return to normal. I could not get back to England, I saw no point in staying in Brittany, so I returned to my home in Lille.
Lille was in the Forbidden Zone, an area in the north of France which Hitler had decreed was to be cordoned off—his springboard for the invasion of Britain. Life was difficult through lack of food, heating, and medicine—made worse by the oppressive Germans who often took delight in worsening our plight. A few days in jail became a frequent occurrence for me, and I was labelled as a ‘British hostage’, under threat of punishment for any assistance given by the French to any escaping British servicemen.
Before long, I became involved in the Resistance, helping those very same British servicemen to escape.
As their easy first victories began to falter, the Germans increased their cruelty towards the civilian population. Life became desperate.
To make matters worse for me, a member of our organisation gave information to the Germans. I found myself with a price on my head, and I had to assume a false identity until I could escape. Firstly, I tried to take a fishing boat across the Channel, and had actually started out to sea before I was forced to hastily retreat to avoid detection. After a short stay in Lille, I once again set off, this time hidden in an orange crate on the back of a lorry to cross the Somme, and then on to Paris. From there it was across the demarcation line into unoccupied France and to neutral Monte Carlo. After consolidating my position, I set off through the South of France, through Spain, to Portugal, where I hoped to get passage through the U-boat gauntlet to England. As it turned out, I had to take a coastal collier to Gibraltar, and then travel by convoy to Scotland.
After a short stay at home, I was off to London. I took employment managing a restaurant, and continued to enquire after Gerald. Where could I find him? I need not have worried, though, for it was he who found me. And with that reunion, the whole war seemed to have ended.
CHAPTER 1
Reflections
G ERALD CAME AND went; life dragged on. We all wondered what Hitler was planning for us. Gerald told us nothing. I had finished with ambulances and whatever they were carrying. The young men from the BEF came and went and helped to drink my cellar dry, but I didn’t care, I felt that I would not be able to hang on to this house once the Germans arrived in France. From what I’d heard about their behaviour in Poland, I had no illusions about us. I suddenly became afraid for Gerald. We’d had such wonderful moments in the past few months that I’d come to idolize him. We loved each other so dearly it seemed almost impossible to imagine both of us in our own separate corners surviving what was to come; and seeing the skies black with planes all day, I knew it was going to be sheer murder.
He’d arrived in the night, red eyed and looking so exhausted. I was sure he hadn’t slept for quite a long time. He’d told me to leave as the Germans were butchering everybody in their paths. I said I would, but as I gazed down on the streaming masses of refugees who kept passing in an unbroken line, I could not bear the thought of joining them, even though I knew I must.
I turned away from the window and gazed around my room, and my mind went back to the day I arrived in this beautiful house in Lille. I knew I would lose everything I’d come to love and cherish if I were not here to protect it; but when I looked down at the screaming refugees, I knew deep down I could never save it.
I could remember vividly the day I arrived. Not so many years ago, but so much had happened in that time that it seemed like another life. Going through those plate glass doors was breathtaking. It was like entering a cathedral. A huge foyer went up the full three stories to the roof, which was stained glass. The sunlight coming through bathed everything in rosy pink. A grand staircase curved up from left to right around the far wall. The walls all the way up were cream tiles. Hanging from the ceiling a magnificent chandelier sparkled and shimmered like a huge diamond. There must have been a thousand crystal droplets. Against the wall, in the curve of the staircase, a huge gilt mirror reflected the mass of flowers in front of it. ‘Breathtaking’ was the only word. My room was like stepping into French history. Like a vision in rose and silver, it was so utterly feminine it simply breathed romance. It could have been a room for Marie Antoinette or Josephine. Cream table curtains in a crossover style gave it a personal and intimate air. Heavy drapes in blush rose brocade held back during the day would hang loose at night and guarantee a restful sleep. A rose satin eiderdown gleamed softly through the lace bedspread on the luxurious bed. Elegant with silk cushions, a hand-carved chaise-longue stretched invitingly. The exquisite Louis IV writing desk was romance itself, as was the perfectly matched dressing table with its delicately carved legs and fragile wing mirrors, and near it, a huge door which opened into an exquisite bathroom.
What a contrast to the stark life in Scotland where I’d been brought up. Some people think we ourselves are responsible for what we become, but it’s not so. What we are is almost completely due to things beyond our control. We make some decisions—yes, of course, but they’re really only relatively small ones. Even they are made in the light of what’s happened to us in the past. Shakespeare makes Cassius in Julius Caesar say, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.’ But he is wrong. What we are is basically in our stars and not in ourselves. ‘Stars’ is nothing to do with it. It plans the circumstances and environment into which we are born. Primarily, we are the result of the genes we inherit from our parents. After we’re born, the lives our parents have lived have their effect on us. We are further shaped by the place we live, the climate, and what happens to us in our formati