"Comfortably seated we made for the frontier leaving my Mother with verbal messages about possible rendezvous points for George, if he followed later.
At the border we waited till the guard was changed and the french guards came along and when we were alone, we had cigars to give them. The growing of tobacco in Belgium had no restrictions unlike in France. It was taken as a gift. They knew that we were all involved by now and so were they but we helped each other.
In no time we made for Compiegne and I didn't like the police who were watching the station. They gave us a long look! Carefully, I went to Gourcy dodging them and fulfilling my mission and using the pass without arousing any suspicion. Once there it didn't take too long for me to find out that the place was hot and reeking with treason.
We quickly retraced our steps and took a different route making for Paris instead. George couldn't have possibly found us if he had escaped from any incarceration, but you never know, I also knew that he would still try. The advantage with Daniel was that he had an uncle seventy kilometres south of Paris in Pithiviers district well hidden behind the Orleans-Forest. His Uncle was a horse dealer and well known to other farmers. This was the place to hide for a while with lots of food available and dense woods to hide in. We just skimmed Paris and got out as quickly as we could in a great haste.
We made good time to Pithhiviers and everything was as we expected and we received a marvellous welcome. Daniel's uncle collected us at the station as he had been pre-warned of our arrival by telephone. His aunt and uncle talked to us for hours afterwards. Daniel's cousins were a nice couple of boys working hard and helping out on the farm most of the time. Their dad said that when the time came he would hide them in the nearby forest where there was already a group of The Resistance and they would join them.
There were still wild boars in these woods. We saw the damage they did on his land to his vegetables the following morning. We stayed over a week and left loaded with an extra bag just filled to the brim with food. On the way we stopped in a town with a big cathedral along the railway. I think it must have been a famous one!
We arrived in Bordeaux safely and went to a lonely bistro close to the harbour. After a good meal without ration cards! we got to talking to people who knew and pointed out a contractor who was looking for workers to help him in the "Landes" repairing a bridge. The company was from Paris called "Sotramet" and so this was the ideal chance for us to proceed with caution to our destiny.
George we never saw again till after the war, he told us that he went as far as Bordeaux and then turned back. The contractor took us to a place called Belin-Belier. A Gestapo man in plain clothes looked at our papers but the boss said we were in his employ and he would look after us, so we were left pretty well alone.
The break was needed to enable us to slowly explore our re-entry to the coastal zone and also to build up our finances again so that we would have money when we needed to move on. The work was pretty hard, it consisted of repairing a worn out and frail bridge. There were lots of mosquitos in this place, it being moors and fen country, forested, lots of beautiful grass snakes and turtles. The food was different here and the work was harder than we had envisaged. Artichokes and beans every day with little or no meat. Rations cards were arranged and issued to us, so this made us in order for the rest of the area.
The crew, like us, consisted mostly of hide-aways, some from as far as Paris, some were Spanish - republicans and maqisards at the ready, it was like a transit camp. When at work on the river, we had our problems with the swift current underneath, boards dropping down and then having to get them back.
Once we had an argument with a bad tempered Spaniard who disappeared at different times in a deep hole in the river while pulling the planks back and dragging a pontoon but it turned out alright in the end. The friendship was tense but bearable. We had started to sing the Volga boat song for him and he was not amused about that.
We even managed to see a bull-fight in Bordeaux at the weekend put on by Portuguese, but shame on them, the Spaniards had to save the situation and jumped into the ring just when the air-raid alarm went off. When everything was over we all left and had a swim instead. My dive from the high board was quite enough and turned out to be a complete flop so I had had enough of it!
Returning home again we were harrassed by the same Gestapo man of before. The manager was present and vouched for us again and got us out! That is something, I remarked to Daniel, we have got to avoid travelling on this line!"
To be continued ....
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