UNNOTICED GUESTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1943, Page 4

UNNOTICED GUESTS

AT FIGHTING FRENCH REVIEW IN LONDON. SEVERAL EX-VICHY OFFICERS. There were other guests at the July 14 review of the Fighting French ift London besides the representatives of the British and Allied Governments, it has just been revealed. The guests whom few noticed were among those most moved by the ceremony. They stood in a little group apart, but their questions were many. They were French officers from an internment camp who had fought for Vichy and been captured, and they had been given special permission to come to London to learn something of the truth. These Frenchmen had tears in their eyes .tears of pride as well as of sorrow ,when they saw the flag of their country proudly borne by its bodyguard just as they had seen it so often in France. They saw General de Gaulle walk along the front of the troops and inspect them, and they witnessed the march past that followed, and they heard the enthusiastic cheers of Londoners as the Frenchmen marched out of Wellington Barracks Square. The tale was told, on the radio to listening millions in France in the following words: “I shall never forget . that . artillery commandant, now my superior Officer, who all through the review put questions to me. Who is that lieutenant? He is an escaped prisoner from Oflag lID, decorated on the field of battle. And that quarter-master? He is a Breton, who passed six months in the prisons of Vichy before being able to join us. Why? Why, because contrary to Laval, he did not wish for a German victory. And that aviator General de Gaulle is decorating? He is the grandson of a Marshal of France. And when the notes of the Marseillaise broke on the air this commandant cried like a child. And that is why; like three soldiers out of four, he has joined the army that refuses to accept the armistice.”