Chapter 13

(JUN 1940 THE CONCLUSION OF THE DUNKIRK EVACUATION)

“It was at this juncture, on May 24, that the German armor, now within sight of Dunkirk and poised along the Aa Canal between Gravelines and St. Omer for the final kill, received a strange – and to the soldiers in the field inexplicable - order to halt their advance. It was the first of the German High Command’s major mistakes in World War II and became a subject of violent controversy, not only between the German generals themselves but among the military historians as to who was responsible and why. We shall return to that question in a moment in the light of a mass of material now available. Whatever the reasons for this stop order, it provided a miraculous reprieve to the Allies, and especially to the British, leading as it did to the miracle of Dunkirk. But it did not save the Belgians.”

(Page 728 of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by William L. Shirer)

The news reports filtering into “Vichy” France from the front lines along the shorelines of the English Channel all painted a rosy picture of victorious German armies sweeping the Allies from the field of battle with unstoppable force of arms. There were no smiling faces at the centers of bureaucracy in the City of Marseilles because the orders from above were abundantly clear that they would be acting as puppets for the Gestapo in any matter of importance from that moment forward.

In military science classes sixty years after the fact, I had studied the “debacle” of Dunkirk in great detail. The public relations use of the term “Miracle” was laughable when one considered the results of the resounding German success in seizing the entire core of Old Europe.

I had a suspicion that Hitler had given the order himself with some sort of sixth sense about needing the British Armies in some future operations against the barbarians of the east when he finally kicked off “Operation Barbarossa” against his supposed ally Joseph Stalin. I believe he still retained some romantic notions of Britain coming to their senses and joining him in a final fight against the dangers of Communism and the ruthless demands for world domination by the Kremlin. Perhaps he was the receiver of faulty intelligence about the attitude of the British people toward the Third Reich and he had made an incorrect conclusion that they would soon join him in his quest to be the sole power in all of Europe. The insulation of his position might have caused this misconception but it had probably been harbored inside his mind even in pre- “Mein Kampf” days.

I have to readily admit that the weight of the heavy fighting all along the front line of Hitler’s invasion of Continental Europe was constantly on my mind in those first days when we were settling into Marseilles hoping to blend in quickly because it was a matter of life and death. My Jewish family in tow was quick to erase all visible traces of Jewishness and I approved completely. The entire “yellow star” thing was simply a ploy to set the trap for the human prey of the Gestapo making the unwanted elements easy to find and easy to separate from the regular masses of civilian workers.

The Jewish family of four was safely stashed away in the bed and breakfast and they were acquiring the southern French attitude of the past did not matter and the future would come when it decided to come all by itself. I encouraged the two girls to wear tiny gold crosses around their necks to cast an image of innocent French schoolgirls and not desperate escapees from the wrath of the Third Reich. The father was not at all pleased by that but he just shook his head and went back to his reading some complicated scientific text about heavy water, whatever the hell that was. I thought it had something to do with fission or fusion but it was all Greek to me.

The older girl was eighteen and she only came up to my chest.

Her name was Emma and she had this annoying habit of constantly pushing her loose hair back behind her ear to keep it from falling down over her face like some teasing film star with an urge to gain some fans. I had seen her naked from the waist down only that morning and I knew she was aware of my ogling eyes as she bent over the porcelain sink in the hallway bath. That bath serviced all six rooms on our floor and it was constantly in use with no regard for gender or reason for use. I was decidedly impressed with the beautiful curves of her buttocks that seemed to quiver with her breathing like some virginal female budding with desire for impromptu coupling with a like-minded member of the opposite sex regardless of age or physical features. I felt that I belonged in that category and I knew instinctively that she would agree to any proposition that excluded her parents from our experiment in copulation. I sensed she was either a virgin or a girl with limited experience and I had this intense desire to initiate her in such foolishness before some mean-spirited male with evil intent took advantage of her generous heart.

Our opportunity arrived a short time later when the other three members of her party went to the Registry office to get the ration cards required for purchasing any food products when available. Emma already had one because she was the only one of the family that shopped for food in their small village before the time came to vacate to save their lives.

I knocked on her door and she pulled me inside showing me that she was once again naked from the waist down and ready for me to give her some much-desired tutoring in the art of love-making. I did her twice with eager enthusiasm and managed to pull out before exploding both times. She was a bit disappointed but I reminded her it was not a time for getting pregnant because wartime was hard on new babies and new mothers as well. She was a sensible girl and knew how to keep her mouth shut. In other circumstances, I would have wanted to keep her around me an extended period of time, but I knew the best thing for her and her family was to make all efforts to get the hell out of Marseilles because the entire process of the “Vichy” government would quickly become to assist the Gestapo in rounding up all Jewish residents, the Foreign-born ones first and then the actual French citizens even if they were only partially Jewish or were married to a Jewish outcast.