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| Germans? On the
contrary. By attempting to stay in their hotel, I would give the
impression that I had nothing to fear. They would not treat me as
a suspect and I would be perfectly safe. Entering the hotel with
my trench coat and my small bag, I asked for a room and was given the last
one they had left.
At breakfast in the morning almost all the tables were occupied by the German guests. Since I did not want to share one with the Gestapo types and be drawn into a possibly dangerous conversation, I looked around the room and found that a French civilian, with a French officer's coat over a chair and a bag similar to mine, was sitting in a corner. He allowed me to join him without hesitation. Yet, as soon as I had sat down and he found out that I was French, he turned to me in disgust, "Do you know what these Germans have done to me, this night?" I asked him to elaborate. "They came into my room at two in the morning and took me down to the cellar in order to interrogate me. They said that I had come to Prades yesterday evening and wanted to know everything about why I was here and so on. They said that they had seen me coming from the station and they wanted to investigate. They kept me there until almost six in the morning. I was finally able to prove to them that I had already been in Prades three days - I fortunately still had my railroad ticket, which I found in my room. They were after another person who arrived yesterday." Suddenly there was a flash of recognition in my mind. It was I they were after. I too had a trench coat and a brown leather bag, much like the other Frenchman. They had apparently begun with him, as his room was on a lower floor. They would get to me later, I supposed. I had to leave, and in a hurry. Ideally, I could leave unnoticed, and I hoped that the Nazis who had interrogated him would be fast asleep after a night of hard work. I went quickly to my room, with my heart pounding furiously, stuffed my trench coat into my leather bag, and began a slow descent to the back door, from which I left without even asking for the bill at the main desk. In the side street, I strode nonchalantly, though expecting, at any moment, a "Halt!" and the cocking of a gun from somewhere behind me. Since the next station was only a few kilometers away, I decided to walk there rather than hang around the station in Prades. I chose a forest path above the valley, which brought me to the next village closer to Perpignan, for the last train in the evening. I boarded the train as it was already moving slowly out of the station, still expecting someone to call from behind. I spent a night in a field outside Perpignan, not in a hotel, and arrived in Montpellier in the afternoon, tired and still somewhat in shock, and reported to our group on the dangers of Prades. We abandoned our plans for a simplified route to Spain, and stayed with the old, through Toulouse, and using Georges' men. Another of our plans was
fortunately nipped in the bud. Somebody, somewhere, got the idea
that, being so close to the coast, we could photograph the German fortifications
along the beaches south of Montpellier. We were to acquire telephoto
lenses and go out and shoot the supposed pillboxes. One of our group
objected. He did not see how we could traipse around the beaches
with these huge |
