For my wife’s first book, Women Heroes of World War II, to help
her develop her chapter on Pearl Witherington, I had to read Pearl ’s French memoir, Pauline. (And I read through
it many times in the limited role I had in helping with Code Name Pauline.) So I am
one of a small number of English-speaking people in the world who first learned
about this admirable woman in French, before a translation was available in
English.
My
French was fairly rusty at the time I first began to read, so it was slow going
and hard work. But, as anyone who has
ever done that can testify, being slowed down in such a fashion can sometimes
make the reading more rewarding. At
least, there is a certain elation you feel when you crack the code and
grasp the simplest sentence. And this
prevented a glib, shallow gloss-over of her story. Things slowed down to almost real time,
allowing opportunity for much reflection and visualization.
And
when it comes to World War II, visualization is something for which I had
developed a knack. The topic had been a
fascination for me since I was a child. I
grew up in the shadow of the war. My
father served in the Pacific Theater. My
friends father’s had also served; they were all heroes to us. My brother and I
re-enacted what we understood about the fighting as kids.
Because
my grandfather had also served in World War I, I was certain I would also end
up in the Army. But it never actually
happened. My generation’s war was—how
can I say it—a somewhat different story. I was no draft dodger—my four years of college
outlasted the Vietnam War—but I couldn’t believe in Vietnam well enough to leave school
and volunteer.
But
like many who didn’t go, I have always been tortured by the questions: “Could I
have handled it?”, “How would I have reacted under fire?” etc.
During
the 1980’s driven by such questions and also wanting to try to understand my father’s
generation and times, I started reading everything I could get my hands on
about World War II. I had been an
undergraduate History major and had taken upper level courses on the War, but
this post education curiosity gave me to opportunity to dig in real deep, and I
went at it with a passion. I wanted to
get a sense of what it would have been like at D-Day, Pelilieu, Iwo Jima , etc., part of that almost suicidal scenario of going
up against fixed machine gun emplacements and pre-calculated mortar fire.
Thus
predisposed, as I carefully worked my way through Pauline, I noticed from the headings that I was coming to a major event
in Pearl ’s
career, the Battle of Les Souches. Pearl had come to France with training in weapons and
demolition, and was noted by her trainers as “the best shot we have had so
far”. The early part of her career had
been the less glamorous (but no less dangerous) role as a courier, but I
couldn’t wait for the chapter on Les Souches so I could read about Pearl in action.
But
this is what I found when I got to the point where the German’s attacked:
I threw on my clothes, picked up my bag
and the cocoa tin where the money was kept.
As I climbed down the ladder from the attic, German bullets were
whizzing past my ears. At the bottom, I
jumped on my bike and cycled to the château’s outhouses where the weapons we
had just received were stocked. They
hadn’t even been cleaned yet and were still covered in grease. Never mind, I hastily loaded the guns and put
detonators in the hand grenades.
One of the chaps rushed up
to me and told me to leave as quickly as possible, the Germans were approaching. They had gotten out of their trucks and were
advancing in extended order across the plain towards the château. I dropped everything and ran to La Barraque,
a farm which was about a mile from the château . . . I didn’t want to be caught
in a house. I fled into a wheat-field . . .
I had a revolver. I decided that if arrested it would be better
if I weren’t carrying any weapons, so I buried it. . . All day
long I remained hidden in the field.
What? I thought.
Did I translate that right? Pearl
Witherington, trained fighter, great shot, weapons expert, didn’t stand and
fight to the death, didn’t even hold on to her pistol, but fled into a wheat
field with a cocoa tin full of money? Nope, there it was: « j’ai
pris…le boite de cacao ou il y avait l’argent.
Je me suis enfuie dans le champ de blé. » That certainly
wasn’t what I had expected to read.
And
I didn’t get it at first. It took me a
while to get my head around it. But eventually,
I came to understand, and in understanding, gained my own personal admiration
for her innate intelligence and sense of focus.
One
at least had to grant that on this day they were hopelessly out- numbered. American’s have been schooled in “remember
the Alamo ” notions of heroic last stands by an
outnumbered few. But even that
accomplished a strategic purpose —a ragtag bunch was holding up Santa Ana ’s army until Sam Houston could get the real Texas army trained for
battle. At the Battle of Les Souches,
there was nothing like that in play. The
Wehrmacht troops that attacked were a local force, not the ones heading for Normandy . There was no one here to “hold up”. Nor was there any strategic point, fort or
field that needed defending to the last.
The Resistance did not fight like that, their approach was more fluid.
But
the much larger reason for Pearl ’s
action was her whole take on what she was about. Unlike my preoccupation—and I dare say what
might be the preoccupation of many people—the last thing on her mind was any
consideration of how she would perform in battle. She had no point to prove, no “investors” to
answer to, no critics to watch out for.
She was free to follow a very pure game plan.
As Code Name Pauline relates, Pearl had succeeded in escaping Nazi-occupied France
at the end of 1940. She was comfortably
ensconced in war- related work in London . But her mind rankled with the images of the
Nazi’s imposing their whole shtick on Paris . Through the auspices of the SOE, she was sent
to do a job, as she put it, and that job was conceived by the entire maquis as
one thing: “to chuck the Germans out.
Full top.” It was this motivation
that brought her to that critical day at Les Souches.
But
in order to function, to continue the fight, one crucial kind of resource was
required—money. It is easy to think of
the Resistance as being a kind of volunteer organization, held together by
ideology and sacrifice. And while that
was certainly true, there were some pragmatic considerations as well. Most of the young men involved were fugitives
from the STO—the obligatory work service.
Able-bodied men were ‘drafted’ to work for the Nazi’s, sometimes even shipped
to Germany
or other areas. Young men who refused
had one alternative—to go into hiding, to go off the grid, to go into “the
sticks”, the French word for which was “le maquis”.
Of
course, being off the grid meant severe limitations on the ability to earn an
income or purchase necessary sustenance.
Some might have been rugged individualists with the skills to fend for
themselves and live off the land. But
most needed some means of support.
From
the point of view of living to fight another day, she knew the chateau was
expendable, as were the weapons she had.
She could find another base of operations, as her story reveals. She could eventually reestablished contact
with London ,
and obtain more weapons, explosives, etc.
But in the short run, were she to keep her network together, she would
need to be able to pay the men.
The
speech continues: “he won it by making the other poor dumb _____ die for his
country.” When I saw the speech in the
movie, back in 1970, I was not favorably impressed. It was delivered in what seemed a dour tone,
with an appeal that I characterized as American macho exceptionalism: Americans
love a winner, every American loves to be a winner, kill all the cowards, etc. Patton seemed a bullet-headed bigot, which
assessment seemed to be supported by his slapping of a soldier suffering from
battle fatigue. But, as we all know,
movie portrayals can be quite unreliable: virtues can be magnified, as can be
faults, in either way to the point of caricature. Patton admitted he used bluster and profanity
to get his men’s attention and to make his points stick.
The
speech in question was given several times to the Third Army before the Allied
invasion of Normandy ,
to gatherings of soldiers most of whom were going into battle for the first
time. No doubt many of them were in contemplation of
“the question”: Am I ready to die for my country? I began to wonder if, rather than attempting
“macho motivation”, he was not using bluster as a tactic to shake his green
troops out of the trap of such thinking.
And in that, perhaps he was doing them a kindness. The full text of the speech supports this
notion—and is notably more jocular than that rendered by George C. Scott—though
I suppose only soldiers who actually heard it can confirm.
“No
man ever won a war by dying…he won the war by making…”. Translation into the head of a soldier: “your
country didn’t send you here to die, it sent you here to push a malicious
conqueror back over the border into their own country and to bring to an end their
terrorizing of the world. You are here to do a job, soldier. Some may die, or be wounded, and some won’t. Since there is not much anyone can do to
influence that, there is really not much point in thinking about it. What you can do, however, is do your utmost
to fulfill the errand you are on.”
MRD
Foot, the noted British expert on the SOE, stated in a Foreward that he wrote
for the English translation of Pauline,
“I have never met anyone braver than Pearl .” I came across this after I had finished my
reading of Pauline, and wondered how he meant that. One thinks of bravery as some kind of
shining, substantial thing in the soul, a ‘virtue’ in the sense Plato would
describe it, that makes a person transcendent, able to face down danger and
death. While Pearl was certainly admirable, I wasn’t sure
I was seeing that kind of transcendence in her story.
But
when I thought of this episode in the wheat field, and reflected on the rest of
her story, I wondered if that kind of bravery isn’t a myth. Patton himself said:
One of the bravest men I saw in the African campaign
was on a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire. . . I … asked him what…he
was doing….'Fixing the wire, sir.' 'Isn't it a little unhealthy up there right
now?' I asked. 'Yes sir, but this … wire has got to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't
those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No sir, but you
sure as hell do.' Now, there was a real soldier. … A man who devoted all he had
to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly
insignificant his duty appeared at the time
I
don’t think Pearl
would have agreed that she was brave, in the transcendent sense. She herself said, “I don’t consider I did
anything extraordinary… I did it because it had to be done.” Pearl ’s
bravery may simply have existed because her sense of her errand was so strong
that it overwhelmed anything else—survival, suffering, reputation,
whatever. Her particular ‘virtue’ may
have been an uncanny ability to silence all other voices in her soul but that
of her mission.
I
found this an outlook I greatly admired and envied. I was glad it had not been me faced with the
decision of what to do as the Germans were upon them at Les Souches—I would have made a complete mess of
things. But since having this
realization, well, something you admire is something you carry with you. And while I’ve not yet come to point of
excusing Patton’s slapping of a soldier, I now suspect that “old blood and
guts” may have been trying to do nothing more than to help his troops overcome
their understandable fear on the brink of battle.
One
final parallel between them comes to mind.
At the beginning of the 1970 movie, Patton is shown arriving at Allied
Headquarters in North Africa , rather displeased
with the condition of American discipline.
At one point he stumbles over and awakens a man curled up on the floor
of the hallway, asleep. When questioned
as to what he thought he was doing there, the soldier replies, “Trying to get
some sleep, sir.” On hearing this Patton
replies, “Well, get back down there, son.
You’re the only ______ in this headquarters who knows what he is trying
to do!”
Pearl
Witherington definitely knew what she was trying to do. Her network recovered rapidly from the attack
at Les Souches. Pearl kept them well supplied with arms and
explosives, as well as a nearby Communist (FTP) network. Unlike many other networks, they were not
undermined by security breaches, not discovered by the Germans due to taking foolish
risks nor did they suffer unnecessary casualties due to rash attacks. She kept them on track, surviving,
functioning, doing their job. As an SOE
operative, she had one of the highest records for successful supply drops in
all of Europe .
She helped make sure that it was the other guys who did more dying for
their country, and thus helped win a war.