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The men have almost all braved dangers to join De Gaulle. Many tales are told of their daring, of the sacrifice of the people behind them. Two fliers took an Italian Armistice Commission plane at Casablanca and flew it to Gibraltar. Two boys flew a German Colonel's plane from a field in Occupied France and landed it on a military airdrome in England. Another stole a transport plane from the Vichy airport and flew to London. A scientist who was reluctant to leave his wife and five children in France found a note in his pocket when he was halfway across the English Channel. It said what she had not told him before, for fear he might not go: that she was pregnant with her sixth child.
De Gaullists slip into France at every opportunity, and can rely so much on popular support that they knock on doors at random, announce simply: "I am here."
They get a night's lodging, a meal or whatever help they need and go on about the business of organizing sympathizers for an eventual uprising. Few are caught within the country; few Frenchmen want or would dare to turn a De Gaullist in, and thousands of people have cards marked with the Cross of Lorraine concealed somewhere against the coming of a De Gaullist agent. When the De Gaullists try to pass a German-corrupted customs official, some of them are caught. Some of them get out. Some reach Spain and are interned there. Later, if they are still alive, they are returned to France and hard labor.
In the field General de Gaulle has only 40,000 men, but in France he is building a greater army. It is still unarmed and unready, but if Vichy and Hitler begin to crumble, the Free French in France will have not merely a fifth column. They may have the nation.