FLIGHT IN OPEN BOAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 February 1942, Page 4

FLIGHT IN OPEN BOAT

FRENCH GIRL,ESCAPES FROM NAZIS. AFTER BEING SENTENCED TO DEATH. An eighteen-year-old French girl, Antoinette, who made a dramatic escape from France in company jvith a French officer, has arrived in England. Her flight took her from the Occupied Zone to Vichy France and across to North Africa, from which she escaped in an open boat to be finally picked up by an Allied patrol ship. She had made up her mind to escape, she said to a reporter, after hearing a broadcast message to the French people by General de Gaulle, leader of the Free French. She has since told General de Gaulle how his broadcast brought the first gleam of hope to the men and women of Occupied France since the German invasion. She was one of a band of students who spent their time pin-pricking Germans and became suspect after they had flown the French and British flags from the spire of a cathedral in Brittany. Many of the boys were imprisoned by the Gestapo for throwing apples at a cinema screen when Hitler’s face was shown. ■ Antoinette was concealed by her mother while preparations were made for her flight to Unoccupied France with the officer whom the Germans had sentenced to death. They eventually arrived at Marseilles and embarked for North Africa. The officer said he was rejoining his unit there, and they were allowed to travel on his passport, Antoinette impersonating his daughter. A corporal and a private joined them. The officer bought a 12ft boat with an engine, and they started off at night. First they lost their rudder and were carried back to shore. They got away again as whistles and signals ashore announced that their escape had been noticed. “We had eight pints of drinking water, some loaves and some tinned sardines,” Antoinette said. “Our petrol lasted about sixty-five miles; then we rowed in turns.” The three men and the girl were at sea for five days and covered two hundred and fifty miles before being pick- , ed up by an Allied patrol launch. Antoinette said that Germans in France were apt to “fall” over bridges on dark nights. - [