Rescuing Madame De Gaulle

On 17 June 1940, the day her husband escaped to England, Madame De Gaulle and her children were at Carantec on the north coast of Brittany. They had taken refuge there with an aunt after leaving the family home at Colombey Les Deux Eglises about a month before. The Germans were advancing fast towards Western France, and when General De Gaulle reached London, he asked that urgent steps be taken to rescue his wife and family.

The decision was taken with Winston Churchill's agreement to send a plane with an SOE intelligence officer who was fluent in French to carry out this rescue. It had been intended that the mission should be carried out by Colonel Louis Franck, but he was diverted to the important mission of trying to persuade the King of the Belgians not to give up the armed struggle, and to bring him to England. The officer who replaced Colonel Franck was my uncle and godfather, Captain Norman Hope. Employed before the war by BP, he had lived in Saigon in French Indo-China, as it then was,so was a fluent French speaker. It is public knowledge that Madame De Gaulle and her children escaped by boat from Brest on 18 June. The following day, the Germans completed their conquest of Brittany. For 40 years, we did not know what had happened to those on board the plane.

My father noted laconically in his private war diary, '17 June. Norman Hope flew over to France on a special mission and no further news was received about him.' Some time later, Norman's wristwatch and some other personal effects were brought out of France by an escaping Frenchman. In February 1941, my father noted, 'Marjorie heard from the War Office that Norman must now be presumed to have been killed in France on 17(sic) June 1940.' Marjorie was Norman's wife and my aunt. She never referred to him in the hearing of my brother, my cousin or me, but when she died in 1982, there were instructions that the notice of her death should include the words, 'widow of Norman Hope, Chevalier du Legion'd'Honneur.' And she had the medal. In the way things turn out, it was too late to find out anything from my aunt. But we needed to find out something about Norman's final hours from somebody.

Thanks to a small number of important personal contacts, including Colonel Franck, my cousin was put in touch with Flt Lieut Kevin Baff, the historian of No 10 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. He had been particularly interested in the flight because two of the crew were the first Australian Air force casualties of the war. Kevin Baff had the perseverance of experise of the true researcher, and in the late 1970's and early 1980's, he was gradually piecing the story together. What happened was this.

on 17 June, Norman travelled with his orders to a Coastal Command base near Plymouth, and was directed to a Supermarine Walrus, an amphibious aircraft with a crew of three, Flt Lieut John Bell, RAAF, Sgt Charles Harris, RAAF and Cpl Bernard Nowell, RAF. The purpose of the flight was so secret that noone at the base knew where the aircraft was going. Norman's briefing was to the crew only. They took off at about 0300 on 18 June with the intention of reaching Carantec at first light. They crossed the Breton coast about 20km west of Carantec, and it is believed they were fired on by the Germans or possibly the Frenc. Having been hit,the pilot was attempting to land in a field close to Ploudaniel, about 18km inland, when the plane hit a low embankment, burst into flames and all four men were killed.

It was fortunate that Madame de Gaulle knew nothing of this attempt to rescue her. Had she waited in Carantec, she might have been captured, and the consequences of that would have been extremely serious, to put it mildly. In the event, she found a car in which she drove with her children to Brest. They were delayed, because on the way the car broke down. Had it not, they would have gone on board a ship which later in the day was sunk in the English Channel with the loss of almost all on board. Instead, they found room on the last boat to leave Brest before the Germans arrived.

In the field near Ploudaniel, a number of people gathered at the site of the crash, and the bodies of my uncle and the crew members were carefully retrieved from the burnt out aircraft, and buried in the town cemetery. All this with the Wehrmacht almost upon them. After the war, the War Graves Commission put headstones on the graves, and the townspeople continue to remember these four casualties of war on All Souls' Day (2 November) and other times of remembrance.

My cousin, brother and I are certain my aunst never visited the grave. We assume she must have received information from the War Graves Commission that her husband was buried in Ploudaniel. All that is symptom of a family mystery we are unlikely to unravel. However, in 2003, we were able after long preparations, to visit the grave, and get as close as we could to the site of the crash: Kevin Baff had established from contacts in the area that the field layout had been substantially altered. It was deeply moving to be there, and we said prayers of remembrance for Norman and the crew of the Walrus.

There remains one further uncertainty about which we are looking for help. It is about the award of the Legion d'Honneur to Norman Hope. The medal exists, but the Central Office for Military Archives in France says there is no record of a citation. Can anyone help us reach a solution to this part of a story which remains in part mysterious?

Sources
Sir Edward Spears. Two Men who saved france. 1966
Edward Ashcroft. De Gaulle. 1962
Flight Lieutenant Kevin Baff. Maritime is No.10. (A history of No 10 Squadron, RAAF).
1983

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