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¶ Admiral Darlan. 58. and General Vuillemin. 57, commanders respectively of the French navy and air force, who were as stolid as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. "Rubicund and nautical," Darlan looked so much like a true sea dog that whenever he gave the impression of being hopelessly at sea in Paris, everyone concluded that this was only because in fact he was so far from the sea. He stood by the unwritten motto of the French navy: Fear God and hate the English—a maxim none could pin on General Vuillemin, who never seemed for or against anything in particular. "His bovine blue eyes had the same expression of rather hostile bewilderment to be observed in oxen as they watch the trains go by."
¶ Mme. Hélène de Fortes, Reynaud's mistress, who was as damaging to the French cause as any of the men. "She was certainly not pretty"; her voice was that of a "corn crake muffled under an eiderdown," and the hatred in her eyes "swept . . . like the strokes of a scythe." When the French government, just before the fall of Paris, fled to Tours, Spears was astonished to drive up to one chateau and find Mme. de Portes "in a dressing gown over red pyjamas, directing the traffic from the steps of the main entrance." He was still more astonished when a long-lost telegram of great importance was at last handed to him by an aide with the muttered apology: "Chut! It was in Madame de Fortes' bed." Any British visitor was anathema to Madame, who would rush in on the heels of the departing guest and exclaim to Premier Reynaud: "What did he say? What is the sense of going on? Thousands of men are being killed while you hesitate to stop the war."
Hoisted Honor. Slowly but steadily, Reynaud succumbed to the pessimism that closed in on him like an iron hoop. The stoutheartedness of such Frenchmen as De Gaulle, Mandel, Herriot and General Alphonse Georges gave the Premier only temporary shots in the arm. When at last Pétain took over only to surrender, it was Spears who, "with hooked hands," leaned suddenly from the plane that was about to take him back to Britain and hoisted De Gaulle on board, in accordance with a prearranged plot. Blank and astonished faces stared upwards from the Bordeaux airport, as the plane sped off, carrying with it, as Churchill has said."the honour of France."
The value of Spears's book is that it fills in the gaps and says bluntly many a harsh truth which the chivalrous Churchill toned down or omitted in his own mammoth history of World War II. The Fall of France is also a gold mine of Churchilliana. Sample: two French officers were breakfasting quietly in a French conference room when they suddenly "beheld an astonishing sight." The double doors burst open and "an apparition which they aid resembled an angry Japanese genie, in long, flowing red silk kimono . . . girdled with a white belt . . . stood there, sparse hair on end, and said with every sign of anger: 'Uh ay ma bain?'" Reminded of this linguistic fall years later, the old man flushed guiltily and said: "I suppose I ought to have said, 'Uh ay MONG bain.'"