This is not a book I would have chosen to read, so thanks to the Book Club that I read it. It is not a biography of the super star diva and her extraordinary life, but the war story of the group she was involved in who continued the fight after the Fall of France. Their control was Wilfred Dunderdale, possibly the model for his friend, Ian Fleming’s James Bond. She uses her superstar role as cover for discussions with diplomats and the powerful, spying on the Italians and Japanese to find their intentions.
The group hide out at her castle on the Dordogne, Milandes, epitomising the France the British can love without liking the French. She performs in Vichy French Marseille and then under cover of her gowns and menagerie goes by ship to Francoist Barcelona, flying on with secreted information to Lisbon in neutral Portugal, to pass on to London.
“Jacques” Abtey, Josephine’s colleague and lover is the book’s other hero. As well as French, he spoke German, English & Arabic. He & Josephine pledge their loyalty to the Free French, but his role in particular is ignored /downplayed by them for having worked for the British & Americans. I like how he paddles down the Seine and Dordogne, clearing his mind, & cycles through narrow Moroccan streets evading the Abwehr.
Josephine, with Abtey (?) in 1945
Throughout you are reminded how much has changed. This is a pre-decolonisation world. The Vichy regime maintained the French protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia and its colony in Algeria. The US Army is segregated. Josephine meets Franco’s brother, the Spanish ambassador to Portugal, apparently largely responsible for the 1939 Iberian Pact. This tied Spain to Portugal, which under Salazar’s dictatorship remained a British ally. So there was an indirect link to Britain, making it less likely Spain would join the Axis.
Josephine and Abtey use her superstar status to get to know & gain the support of tribal chiefs in the Atlas & the Rif. The British through public school Musson’s Smuggling Fleet based in Gibraltar and the Americans, through CIA links to the Mafia, prior to the US entering the war, ship illegal cigarettes into North Africa & in return generate funds, receive information and transfer people and arms. You are reminded that closed borders generate illegal activity.
Whilst Josephine is very ill, Abtey works with the tribal chiefs and Mafia. He is captured and imprisoned by the Abwehr, escapes wearing the robes of a local woman supplied by a prison servant acting on the instructions of the tribal chief, pure James Bond. Abtey was interrogated by an SS officer, who after attempts to recapture Abtey prove fruitless, commits suicide. Divisions between the SS and Abwehr are highlighted.
After the Allied advance into North Africa and the Near East, Josephine performs for Allied troops, travelling by jeep and truck through the Western Desert. The following truck rolls over with an escorting Breton sailor killed. The imagery and action comes straight out of one on my film favourites, “The English Patient”. Josephine continues to collect information, but the Free French colonial authorities refuse to pass on reports of local discontent.
Throughout French disunity comes across including within the Free French between De Gaulle and Giraud, a real hero, and between British and American attitudes to the French.
I plan to read more by Damien Lewis and more on the Fall of France, Vichy and French decolonisation.
Of Books, Bikes & Islands 