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A Legal Matter. When war came, Mendès volunteered for the air force. He was back in Paris on leave when the Germans burst through and around the Maginot Line. Embittered at France's "moral abdication, lack of honor, treason," he gathered up his wife and two sons, followed the government and the remains of the Chamber of Deputies to Bordeaux, was put aboard a cruiser to Morocco. Reporting to the Rabat air base for duty, he learned that he was going to be arrested soon for desertion from the air force. He might have escaped to Gibraltar, but Mendès was a lawyer with a highly developed French sense of légalité; he decided to accept arrest and argue his case. At the trial, Mendès expected that he would be allowed to defend himself. A series of military men testified for him. The tribunal heard them and then declared him guilty without hearing him. "An innocent man has been convicted out of political hatred," cried Mendès. "This is not the justice of France but of Hitler.*
His obligation to légalité was fulfilled. "Not only did I have the right to my liberty," he says, "but I considered it my duty to escape."
Whispers in the Night. One day he noticed a six-foot piece of spiked lightning rod lying in the mud in the prison courtyard, realized he could use it as a ladder. But he took thought. He was not in good physical shape. He left the rod in the mud, went back to his cell and did pushups. He began saving his prisoner's pocket money, bought a ration book from a fellow prisoner, wangled a local train timetable—only to find that the rod had disappeared.
Weeks went by before he spotted a rusty hacksaw in the prison workshop and stole it. He found a rubber stamp, fabricated himself a shoddy set of papers. Then he had luck; the prison doctor decided he had a bad liver and sent him to the hospital. There Mendès, as an officer, demanded a private room. He briskly set to work sawing the window bars, and let his beard grow. One evening, he packed a bag full of extra clothes, made a rope of his sheets and let himself down to a narrow courtyard. He slipped past a guard, made his way up to the top of the prison wall and lay flat. Then he heard whispers.
Below him, leaning against a tree, were a pair of lovers. The boy had a proposition. The girl was hesitant. Minutes passed. Mendès waited, helpless. At 11 o'clock, the local cinema would empty and the streets would be crowded with people.
Below him, the conversation went on. "Never did it seem more urgent for me to see a woman lose her virtue." he says. Finally the boy won his plea and the couple disappeared. Mendès dropped 20 feet to freedom. Later, in a book, Mendès addressed the unknown girl of that night, promising that "the day we account for our acts before the Creator, I will take on myself, if you wish, the fault you committed that evening. For I wished it, I swear, more passionately and more impatiently than your young lover."