1961-12-20 — Page 20

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14

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1961.

OUT OF THE VALLEY

Courage-it's not the only

THEY are people as different as you can imagine. But they are united by a common experience a moment of supreme danger which they came through safely. Their stories are as unusual as they are inspiring. They are told by

a top writer of

deep understanding. Today: Wing Commander Forest

Yeo-Thomas, a Paris

fashion director who

became Britain's most

courageous secret

agent.

W

instinct that

keeps a man alive...

by HERBERT KRETZMER

TEARING an open-necked shirt he limped across the carpet to pull back the lace curtains. "That's where they took me," he said in

a voice curiously vacant of emotion."Over there on those dirty steps."

Together we looked down into the Paris dusk, across the road to the Metro station called Passy. The honk of traffic barked nervously up at us from the Rue des Eaux, the narrow street five floors down.

De let the curl; m drop. Then, with some pam and difficulty, he tock is seat again. crossed his fingers beneath his chin and

Bealer, strangled, half drowned, suspended by chains from the ceiling like an exhibll in a butcher's shop, Yeo-Thomas represents, in

the incarnation of all British suffer ed pale and flat, and devoid of g during the last war.

looked at me without a word.

His eyes like lus voice, serm-

passion.

Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas, when

:03

F F. E.

ןן!

a Away.

He knew more than any man alive about the organisation

Supplies

and

u

the

I met hun French Resistance groups. Paris recently. was just of hospital again.

But he never broke, never spoke-not

when even

the For 16 years

surgeons Parts and London have attended Germans chained his played to the multiple agonies inflicted body to a table top, ratsed their cushes &nd beat him into thus by the Gestapo when, en the self-same dirty steps of

insensibility, concentrating their Pasty statum he was captured most devastating blows beneath

a5

a sp

Britain, in the testing Time of the Second World War, produced many men of daring. skill, and courage. But perhaps the story of Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas occupies a special place even in those archives of bravery.

CHESS

by LEONARD BARDEN

the bell.

Survival

Aer Forest

The story of Wing Commaḥ- Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas, MC, GC, has been dutifully written down by Bruce Marshall in a best-selling book called "The White Rabbit." is another story But there that has not yet been told. bas to do with the faith that sustained him. It has to do with the magic of the spirit.

We talked for hours. And the pattern of his survival, as it emerged from his quiet and modest conversation, began to reveal a vision of Britain came close to being a Kipling

fantasy--a vision as have

perhaps seemned,

esque Ly

that

to men like Rhodes, who bulli

empires and painted the map

(GIGO)

red, who identified themselves with a personal illusion Ballona! greatness imtil and illusion were inseparable.

man

B-

Here is a problem by C. G. Walney (Observer, 1924). White to play and mate in two moves.

Solution No. 6159: 1. B7; 2 Resigns. There is no adequate defence to the threat of 2.. Q-B8 ch. 3 8x Q. R-K8 ch; 4 R-KI, RxR mate.

London Azpress Sertice.

I kept reminding myself that I father as my was British,

I kept instructed that I should. remembering that I was better. I had grown up with his belief. "So 1 never gave up. I kept going like an athlete, like Pirie, I suppose. Get through the next get through seconds the next minute. I had to give an example. I

couldn't let the side down....

lesson I was never allowed to few forget. And I never did."

Yet consider this. The Yeo- Thomas family has been settled 122 France for more than century, Ever stuce 1855, in fact, when the wing commander's great-grandfather left the mines Wales to start a of his native coal depot in the French channel port of Dieppe.

Patriotic

Hever never

its

the

ап

Inhuman

Such sentiments, nowadays

Yeo-Thomas... white rabbit with the heart of a lion

80

I see a world concealed hole where my father look around me.

his radio hid

during the which has returned to its old

brutalities. And it hurts. occupation."

Among the regular wartime hear young people say that the old man would England has had . Down the messages have heard broadcast by the drain. Fm all right, Jack. It B.B.C. was one that sald shakes me. simply: "Le petit lapin blanc "Sometimes it hurts much est rentre au clapler"The that I wish I could have died

tle white rabbit has

from Buchen- re- after my escape turned to his hutch."

wald in '45. It's not easy for me This was to inform the French to tell you a thing like that.

But it's true. Resistance

I wish, sometimes, Yeo-Thomas 150 that

had died then. We knew we had got back safely to London after his sorties into Nazi-held had won the war. It was the most completely satisfying France.

feeling I've had in all my life.

In March 1944 the white "I am, you must know, since rabbit did not return to his you ask, a terribly disappointed butch Betrayed by another man.

Yea agent at Passy station Thomas was captured by the Jubilant Gestapo.

are the fruitful seeds of political and national satire. Jingo jokes and Blimp cartoons. The BBC's Goon Show ran riot on gags about the Union Jack and the thrown into kort of blind ddelity of the Light Brigade.

But

Inan,

this Imagine

after mcessant boatings, stripped and a bath of cold water, his face repeatedly held under water until he was on the drowning, while all here suddenly, in the point of

bath stood a crowd around the Paris dusk. in the home of a of German girls, Gestapo

office hero, these words took almost workers, jeering and giggling at forgotten dimensions,

his nudity and his agony.

Then consider the pure, almost reason for simple

"I was

the Though

family returned to Britain, it (orgot that Britain was fountain-head. This was message, nourished with almost mystical love, passed on thought of four generations Ire & catechism from genera- tlon to generation.

"We were so determined to re- nain British," Yeo-Thomas said, what it became a fixed family rule that the children when they came, had to be born in Britain.

to the

of British family living in Dieppe, un enclave of national Yeo-Thomas's courage. pride in a foreign land, forging British, I had to give an a faith that was finally capable example, I couldn't let the side of withstanding

even the most down." human assaults on its founda-

tions.

Wing

Commander Yeo- In France the infant boy was Thomas, as it grew dark, subjected

customary switched on the light in his fat, patriotic influences. "As soon I saw for the first time, almost as i was old enough to stand hidden in a corner, a photo- up straight I remember how, of General de Gaulle over

graph every evening, our meals ended an inscription in his own script. with family prayers and the "To Forest as a token of the singing of 'God Save The faithful friendship ('d'attache King

I joined in the singing ment fidele) of his wat com almost before I knew what the rade Charles de Gaulle." words meant.

"It was mysterious thing.

It was imbued in us, like a faith ....more than a faith, for I am

not a godly man.

"We had one large photo-

Betrayed

ed

Ambition

Later, outside again, I watch- the Parisians, huddled in their fur-collared overcoats. their faces chiselled by private

anbition, jostling one another

on the narrow pavements.

I thought of a German named

Merod, chief Rudi ven

and most odious of Yeo-Thomas's torturers, living today

in the scot- free and fat with stolen wealth, Spanish port of Bilbao,

The slons of Passy station were covered in the dead leaves of autumn I stood there for a moment, looking up for the last time at the lighted window on the-fifth door of the apartment building in the Rue des Eaux.

Behind that window, with his Ho lit a pipe as Barbara

and his memories, was the pipe Yeo-Thomas, the slim blonde the bravest and proudest man met in wartime London, entered have ever met-the white rabbit the room with a very English who proved, when he was tray of tea. Domesticity has trapped, that he had the heart not dulled her prettiness,

of a lion,

'It hurts'

Before the war he was the manager of the Paris Fashion house of Molyneux ("My God," said an especially stupid brass hat in 1941, the R.A.F. has sunk

dress- to employing a maker!"). Today Yeo-Thomas

graph, I recall, of King Edward The photograph is the sole is the representative in France VI which, when he died, was visible link with Yeo-Thomas's of the Federation of British draped in black, and for some brave past, for he is not in any Industries, weeks afterwards we were not way self-congratulatory.

He puffed at his pipe silently "I was brought up to believe," allowed to talk above a whisper.

The whole fat is a link with for a long while, Then he said Yeo-Thomas told

me. "that "Yes, I remember it very Yeo-Thomas's years of courage. In a voice touched with a sud- belog British was the very clearly.

And always my father it was from this very room." den and genuine sadness: "The drest thing that could happen saying: Forest, you are British he said, "that my father was gilt has worn off the ginger- to anybody. I had instilled in

- remember that always.*

taken by the Gestapo and bread.... me, ever since I can remember;

sent 10 Fresnes prison. Only *50 a sense of being special, privi-

"I mean," he said, "it just when

the the other day, this dreplace leged, and better. It was 2 Germans were beating me up, collapsed and we found a hasn't happened, hast?

you

see,

1

London Erpress Service.

JESMOND HAMPTON COURT

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