She Landed by Moonlight: The Story of Secret Agent Pearl Witherington by Carole Seymour-Jones

Author:Carole Seymour-Jones [Carole Seymour-Jones]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Published: 2013-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

21

Countdown to D-Day

PEARL escaped the Gestapo raid by a hair’s breadth. When she had woken on the fine, bright Monday morning of 1 May, she had decided on the spur of the moment to go on a picnic with Henri, and had also persuaded Amédée Maingard to accompany them to the river Cher.

At 6 p.m., the little group were sitting on the river bank in the evening sunshine when they caught sight of a cyclist pedalling furiously towards them. It was Monsieur Bidet, father-in-law of the son of the house, Robert L’Hospitalier – ‘Marc’ – an evader from forced labour in Germany. Henri was the first to jump to his feet.

The cyclist was as white as a sheet: ‘La Gestapo est à Rimard,’ he gasped. Monsieur Bidet had just heard that the Gestapo were at Rimard from the local doctor, who had gone there to treat Robert’s ill grandmother.

‘The Gestapo have come to arrest Robert,’ the old lady had whispered to the doctor. ‘They’re in the house now.’

The doctor had bent closer: ‘What do you want me to do?’

Madame L’Hospitalier had gripped his arm fiercely. ‘Warn la mission britannique.’ Moments later, she was arrested by the Gestapo.

The doctor, however, was allowed to leave and was able to convey her warning to Monsieur Bidet, and thence to Pearl, Henri and Maingard before they returned to rue de Rimard.

Pearl was not sure if her intuition of events could be called truly clairovoyant, but she felt strongly that she possessed a sixth sense that warned her of dangerous situations: on 30 April, the night before Hector’s arrest, she had felt that danger was near, and had had a vivid dream that the Gestapo were coming for her. It was one of two premonitions she would have in 1944 that she was sure saved her life: ‘It happened to me twice,’ she said, later. ‘The night before Maurice’s arrest, and the night before the 11th of June …’ It seemed to her, not for the first time, that God or fate was guiding her. It was not her destiny to die that day.

On the night of 1 May, after Hector’s arrest, Henri and Jacques Hirsch spent the night in a bistrot, attempting to sleep on a billiard table. Pearl returned to her lodgings. The next morning, 2 May, to their horror they awoke to find German lorries full of soldiers in the town: the Gestapo had sealed off Montluçon after finding the list of the ‘Stationer’ circuit’s landing grounds and were hunting Maingard and Pearl, who had slipped their net the previous day.

The town was completely encircled by troops, German and French. Pearl, Henri, Maingard and Jacques Hirsch managed to borrow a car and somehow outwit the Gestapo. Slipping out of town by the back roads, they only made one stop the next day, at the village of Saint-Gaultier, and sent a message to London: ‘Hector est très malade. Hector is very ill,’ signifying that Hector had been taken.

It was the end of ‘Stationer’; the group was scattered to the four winds.

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