On to Paris Via the Comet Line

When we arrived in Paris, I was following my guide through the station, and suddenly, two gendarmes stepped out from behind a pillar and stopped him. And I didn’t know why and I saw him turning white and I kept going out of the station. I had no other choice and fortunately there was a little square near the station and there was a bench there, so I sat on the bench and watched the station. And after a while, my guide came out and walked by me and I followed him. And I had been told beforehand, he would take me to where there would be a man, of about 60 with a newspaper under his left arm, grey hair and wearing a French beret. And he’d be window shopping. So I saw him and I followed him. And he took me to an apartment where I stayed over night. And then I was taken, the next day, by a guide to an apartment in the suburb of Paris, which was kept by a couple named Cochez (sp). And I stayed there for about a week and one day a guide arrived with another airman, who turned out to be my friend Pierce. Also from a (inaudible), an Australian. We talked for ten minutes perhaps but then he was left there and I was taken to another place, to another large house, where there were my two friends of the night before, that I’d travelled with, were already there. And also a young Belgian and a Scottish soldier who’d been a prisoner of war for a couple of years ever since Dunkirk. And we were five and what was happening was they were making a travelling package to go across the Pyrenees but we didn’t know that. We weren’t given any information in advance, in case, for security reasons. So in case we were captured we couldn’t give away the information to the gestapo.