avenue of spies
TRANSCRIPT
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avenue of spies
a true story of
terror, espionage, and
one american family’s
heroic resistance in
nazi-occupied france
Alex Kershaw
C R O W N P U B L I S H E R S
N E W Y O R K
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Copyright © 2015 by Alex Kershaw
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown
Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin
Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kershaw, Alex.
Avenue of spies: a true story of terror, espionage, and one American family’s heroic
resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris / Alex Kershaw.—First edition.
1. Jackson, Sumner Waldron. 2. Jackson, Sumner Waldron—Family. 3. World War,
1939–1945—Underground movements—France—Paris. 4. Spies—France—Paris—
Biography. 5. Americans—France—Paris—Biography. 6. Physicians—France—Paris—
Biography. 7. World War, 1939–1945—France—Paris. 8. Paris (France)—History,
Military—20th century. 9. France—History—German occupation, 1940–1945. I. Title.
D802.F82P37476 2015
940.53'44361092313—dc23 2015016861
ISBN 978-0-8041-4003-4
eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-4004-1
Printed in the United States of America
Maps by David Lindroth Inc.
Jacket design by Elena Giavaldi
Jacket photographs by DPA/ZUMA (top lef); Mondadori/Getty (top right); Roger-Viollet/
Te Image Works (bottom lef); courtesy the author (bottom right)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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Bois deBoulogne
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Part One
c ity o f d arkne s s
What Nazism, epitomized by the Gestapo, tried to realize
(and almost succeeded in realizing) was the destruction of
man as we know him and as thousands of years have fash-
ioned him. Te Nazi world was an empire of total force, with
no restraints.
J A C Q U E S D E L A R U E , he Gestapo: A History of Horror
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O N E
the fall
A SHELL E XPLODED. Fragments o shrapnel hit a young soldier. He
ell to the ground. Beore long, nurses with East Coast prep school
accents, volunteers at the American Hospital o Paris, helped the
young man into a makeshif operating theater. Te emergency sur-
gery was in the elegant ballroom o a casino in Fontainebleau, orty
miles south o Paris. A tall man with thick dark hair, blue eyes,
bushy brows, large but nimble hands, and a boxer’s ace was soon atthe shattered young man’s side. His name was Dr. Sumner Jackson,
a fify-six-year-old American and the chie surgeon o the American
Hospital o Paris.
Sumner began to examine the young man’s leg and decided there
was only one thing or it. It would have to go. He needed a saw. It
would be no easy operation given the poor light in the casino. A
ew minutes later, the boy lay in agony on a roulette table as Sumner
prepared to remove his leg, careully cutting off the flow o blood
through his arteries. I Sumner made a mistake, the boy could bleed
to death.
Sumner took a scalpel and sliced across the boy’s muscles, reveal-
ing the underlying bone. With an oscillating saw he cut through the
bone and filed down the rough edges beore delicately laying muscle
and skin flaps over the stump. It was painstaking work that took
great care and concentration in the dim light, and Sumner took in-
tense pride in his expertise. A superb combat surgeon, arguably the
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4 AVENUE OF SPIES
finest o his generation, he had vast experience, having spent much
o the last war trying to repair shattered young bodies. In 1916 he
had volunteered or Britain’s Royal Army Medical Corps and had
arrived in Flanders with other Americans who had defied U.S. presi-
dent Woodrow Wilson’s call or neutrality. He was assigned to a sur-
gery near the Somme battlefield, where over ninety percent o those
who “went over the top” and attacked German positions ended up
being killed or wounded.
Sumner had operated on hundreds o young men whose limbs
had been torn asunder by shellfire. wenty-five years later, he wasonce again doing his best to save lives, but there was something par-
ticularly unnerving about the nature o men’s wounds in this new
war. It only took one German 88mm shell to kills dozens o troops
i caught out in the open. Hitler’s modern weapons were designed to
rip humans to small pieces o flying flesh, to turn them to hamburger.
Sumner completed the amputation, ensuring that the boy’s leg
was careully bandaged. Tere was no time to rest. Dozens o othergravely wounded men lay waiting their turn. Sumner was working
sometimes deep into the night—ofen beside a ellow American doc-
tor named Dr. Charles Bove—sawing, cutting, stitching, trying to
save as many soldiers and civilians as they could. Te casino’s cor-
ridors were filled with emergency surgical cases, patients begging or
water or lying in grim silence, resigned to death. Whenever Sumner
straightened his back and took a drink o coffee or water, he could
see yet more who had been laid out on the baccarat tables, waiting
to suffer the saw. Tere were as many urgent cases awaiting Sumner
when he returned to his base, the American Hospital o Paris, reput-
edly the best equipped in Europe, where he had worked since 1925.
He made the journey back and orth in a white ambulance, some-
times driven by an upper-class young American volunteer, through
the working-class outskirts o Paris and then to the leay streets o
upscale Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Many Parisians could not remember such a glorious spring. Te
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THE FALL 5
chestnuts along the Avenue Foch, where Sumner and his wie and
twelve-year-old son lived in a ground-floor apartment at number 11,
were a wonderul green. Breezes carried the sweet scent o purple
lilacs and lilies o the valley. From a wide terrace adjoining his office
on the ourth floor o the hospital, when Sumner was able to take a
break rom surgery, he could see the city’s immense elegance as he
stood or a ew minutes relaxing, usually smoking a cigar or more
ofen a cigarette.
Sumner’s view o Paris, spread out beore him, was abulous, with
the Eiffel ower clear in the distance a ew miles to the southeast. Inthe courtyard below, ambulances pulled up all that May, their bells
ringing, returning rom the ront lines. Te impossible was happen-
ing. France was alling. Anyone who could get out o Paris was doing
so. Many o his American colleagues at the hospital, a cornerstone o
the expatriate community since 1910, and his wealthy neighbors on
Avenue Foch, several o them Jews, had already fled.
Sumner had seen the rise o ascism in Europe, the weakness oEuropean democracies, and the appeasement o Hitler, whom he de-
spised. He had been convinced the previous all, afer war had bro-
ken out, that the United States would join her allies rom the last war
to once again put Germany in her place. Hitler would be stopped.
Sumner could not believe that America would stay neutral and let
Europe all into the abyss once again. But now his worst ears were
being confirmed.
A ortnight earlier Europe had exploded as the Nazis launched a
massive spring offensive in the West. Since May 10, Sumner had read
headlines that grew more ominous by the day. Te Wehrmacht had
stormed with seemingly unstoppable orce through Belgium, Hol-
land, and northern France. Hitler’s armies were less than a hundred
miles rom Paris. Te French were in retreat, the nation losing heart,
it seemed, and the unimaginable happening. Indeed, Sumner knew,
it was no longer a question o whether France would be deeated
but when.
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6 AVENUE OF SPIES
Operating on severely wounded young men consumed all o
Sumner’s waking hours. When he did have time to wipe his brow,
take a long gulp o coffee, and drag on a cigarette as he gazed to the
south rom his terrace, he could not help but think about his fify-
two-year-old wie and their son, Phillip, at home on Avenue Foch, a
couple o miles rom the Eiffel ower.
Afer twenty-one years o marriage, Sumner was still utterly de-
voted to Swiss-born Charlotte Sylvie Barrelet de Ricou, whom Sum-
ner had always called oquette. She was petite with sandy brown
hair and the lean physique o a keen tennis player. In her youth, shesometimes boasted, she had beaten the best French tennis player o
the time, Suzanne Lenglen, who had won thirty-one championship
titles. Afer the last war, Sumner had taken her back to New England,
but she was so dreadully unhappy, missing Paris and her amily so
much that she ell ill. “It’s me or America,” she finally demanded.
Sumner chose her, abandoning a good job in a Philadelphia hospital
and returning to Paris, where he was orced to spend years studyingFrench and taking endless exams in order to practice medicine in
France, much to his bitter rustration. He was in act compelled to
repeat six o his seven years o medical school. Finally, at age thirty-
five, he had been able to earn a living as a doctor once more.
oquette had been more than worth the sacrifice. Te youngest
o six children whose ather was a successul Swiss lawyer, she had a
remarkably powerul spirit. Sumner also greatly admired her cour-
age and stamina. She had won a Red Cross award or our years o
service in bloody surgeries in World War I and shared his belie that
one should give back, not just take, in a civilized society. He had first
met her when she was a eisty twenty-eight-year-old nurse working
at his side in a hospital on the Rue Piccini in Paris in 1916. “Te first
time I kissed your mother,” Sumner jokingly told his son, “was in a
linen closet at the Rue Piccini. . . . It was a very long kiss.”
oquette was witty, spoke flawless English, and quickly discov-
ered that the equally pithy Sumner also loved to swim, sail, and play
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THE FALL 7
tennis. Soon, thirty-one-year-old Sumner, whom she called Jack, was
seriously wooing her, ofen visiting her amily home in Enghien-les-
Bains, an upscale suburb o Paris. Neither oquette nor her amily
needed any persuading, and the couple was married at the amily
home in Enghien in November 1917. Over a decade later, their son,
Phillip, known to all as Pete, was born on January 10, 1928, in the
American Hospital. Phillip’s birth when oquette was thirty-nine,
afer she had all but given up hope o conceiving, prompted a rau-
cous party with several bottles o Bollinger 1921 champagne being
drunk to celebrate the new arrival.Sumner and oquette had since doted on their only child, and
he had grown up very much aware that his parents had a great love
or each other. oquette did all she could to make Sumner happy,
determined he would never regret his decision to orsake his amily
(he was close to his brother, Daniel, and sister, Freda) and a lie in
America or one in France. Yet on the outbreak o the Second World
War, the previous September, Sumner and oquette had once againbeen orced to decide whether they should stay in Europe or leave.
Sumner had thought it best they go to America or Phillip’s saety.
But oquette had insisted on staying. Te idea o living in the United
States again filled her with almost as much dread as the approaching
Germans.
Eight months later, oquette was just as determined to stay in
Paris, close to her amily. And Sumner still aced an agonizing
choice. Should he continue to do as his wie wanted? Or should he
ignore her wishes and take his amily back to America while there
was still time to escape?
FLAME S JUMPE D into the sky. Near Amiens in northern France,
an ambulance driver tried to make his way past burning buildings,
avoiding downed telephone wires, rotting horse carcasses, and bomb
craters, pitiul evidence o the immense erocity o Hitler’s Blitzkrieg.
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8 AVENUE OF SPIES
It was early on May 18, 1940, when a well-spoken Princeton gradu-
ate, thirty-two-year-old Donald Coster, looked up rom the ambu-
lance and saw German planes, wave afer wave o them. Tere were
the whistles and screams o bombs alling. Stuka dive-bombers with
inverted gull wings attacked, dropping five-hundred-pound bombs,
leaving behind a blanket o acrid, sickening umes. Coster made it to
a hospital in Châteaudun just as the bombing became most intense.
erribly araid, the volunteer ambulance driver took shelter in the
hospital’s basement.
Afer about an hour, the sound o bombing ended. Tere was atense silence. Coster knew the Germans were close by, approaching
Amiens itsel, one hundred and fify miles north o Paris. Like mil-
lions o French, Coster had tried to escape their lightning advance.
Tat was why he was now cowering in a cellar beside several dozen
doctors, nurses, and wounded soldiers. Te bombing began again.
Tis time the explosions were much closer. Coster elt them like
“punches” against his chest. It was quiet once more. He could hearhis heart beating ast and then came the sound o heavy jackboots on
cobblestones. For several minutes Coster waited, expecting grenades
to be thrown down into their shelter. He stood up and climbed the
steps leading out o the cellar.
Daylight blinded Coster as he lef the shelter and walked into a
courtyard. For the first time he caught sight o a German soldier.
Te storm trooper was aiming at a line o French prisoners backed
against a wall. Tey were civilians. Te German looked as i he was
going to finish them off. Coster waved his identification card at the
German, who instantly turned his gun on him and was about to pull
the trigger when someone called out in German, begging the soldier
to spare Coster and take him to his commander instead.
Coster and some o his ellow ambulance men, under guard,
walked fify yards or so until they reached a main junction on the
road to Amiens. Tere was a roaring o engines, a clanking o tank
tracks. A Panzer column was moving into the city—the tip o the
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THE FALL 9
Nazi spear thrusting toward Paris. Tere had been no more mobile
and powerul orce in the history o war, and Coster looked on in
awe. Te column seemed to stretch orever and moved so ast, the
tanks thundering by at orty miles an hour, bristling with heavy
weapons, the eight-oot-high steel behemoths surely unstoppable.
Armored cars ollowed, pulling camouflaged antiaircraf guns, their
20mm barrels pointing skyward. One tank rolled toward a bar-
ricade arther down the road and smashed through, making light
work o heavy logs. “Nothing invented by man, you elt with a shock
o despair,” recalled Coster, “could possibly withstand this inhumanmonster which had already flattened hal o Europe.”
A German officer ordered Coster to help at a nearby hospital and
bring in wounded rom the battlefield. In a field o high grass were
many English dead rotting in the sun, their aces purple and black.
Tere were a ew men whose wounds were already gangrenous, and
they gritted their teeth as they called or help rom where they lay
amid dozens o dead cows with huge bloated stomachs. Te stenchwas nauseating. Tree hundred British soldiers had been riddled
with bullets rom the Panzers’ machine guns. Fewer than thirty had
survived.
A German approached as Coster helped the wounded. He thought
Coster was a British soldier, mistaking his uniorm, and snatched his
gloves away. Coster stupidly tried to grab them back and the German
whipped out his pistol and aimed it at his stomach. Coster pointed
to the band on his arm, showing the symbol or the American Field
Service, a volunteer ambulance unit.
“ Amerikanisch,” said Coster.
o Coster’s surprise, the German officer stood to attention, sa-
luted Coster, shook his hand, and then lef without another word.
Other German soldiers nearby talked with Coster. Tey regarded
Americans with bemused contempt, especially President Roosevelt,
a vacillating windbag compared to their glorious, decisive Führer.
One o them said: “We never see any o you on our side.”
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Tere was more good news rom the ront—or the Germans.
Afer advancing through southern Belgium, the Germans had
crossed the Meuse River and pierced the French line at Sedan. Te
Allies had been orced to retreat toward the port o Dunkirk. Disas-
ter loomed. Nothing, it seemed, could stop the Nazi juggernaut as it
barreled toward Paris.
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