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 " A real wartime Bond
14th January 1989
WILLIAM RUSSELL meets a remarkable man from Guatemala
FACT can be far stranger than fiction, as Alec Le Vernoy's story of his war demonstrates. In No Drums -- No Trumpets he outdoes James Bond when it comes to amazing adventures, and his book contains, as well as tales of derring-do, a moving account of life in the German concentration camp at Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen from which he escaped.
Now 70, Le Vernoy lives in Guatemala with his second wife Christine, his translator, and started writing the book to pass the time in his retirement. He is not a man who likes to be idle.
After joining the army as a medical student he saw action and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Following the fall of France he ended up in Algeria, then under Vichy rule. He still wanted to fight, and decided to make for Gibraltar, where he hoped the British would allow him to join the Free French. He rowed to the Rock in a kayak, only to be told by a baffled British intelligence officer that he was not wanted and sent back.
He rejoined his unit, deserted, turned guerrilla fighter in Tunisia, was incarcerated in a Tunisian prison after another abortive attempt to get back to Europe, was sentenced to death, fought with the SAS in the desert outside Cairo, fell into German hands and was shipped to the Fatherland, his identification papers fortunately being lost en route.
He was put into Sachsenhausen, tortured by the Gestapo, wangled a good job in the prison hospital, and eventually escaped, made it to Spain, joined the resistance movement and carried out a series of cross-border raids against the Nazis. His book is at times incredible. But the section about Sachsenhausen is so powerful that it makes the Bondish adventures ring true as well.
Le Vernoy, a charming, elegant man who looks a good 20 years younger than he is, took me aback when we were talking about the effect his war had had upon him. One result, he said, was that he never went anywhere unarmed. Then he fumbled in his pocket.
I sat up rigid in my seat -- I had met him in the cocktail bar of the soigne White House Hotel in Regent's Park. He produced not, as I had feared, a gun, but a heavy, bone-handled pocket knife. He said he only used it on picnics. But he could, as his book makes clear, use it in other ways.
He holds no grudges against his German captors, and when the West German Government tried to persuade him a few years back to give evidence against one of the SS doctors, Heinz Baumkotter, who had worked in Sachsenhausen, he refused. Some of his comrades in Sachsenhausen cannot forget what was done to them. But Le Vernoy does not share their wish for revenge, possibly because after his escape, while leading missions across the border from Spain into occupied France, he was able to kill Germans again and again.
''I harmed the Germans much more than they harmed me,'' he said, sipping his orange juice. ''I have been beaten and tortured, but the impressions I have kept are positive inasmuch as they kicked me, but I killed plenty of them. I do not say I won the war, but when it was over I had the deep satisfaction of knowing I was one of the million men who helped.''
For a man who was beaten, held in solitary confinement in a Tunisian prison, tortured by the Gestapo, starved in prison camps, and wounded in action several times, he looks remarkably fit. But he carries the scars.
''I have no more spleen; a few inches of plumbing less inside; my eyes, which were burnt, have lost some of their sharpness, but everybody my age has the same problem; and I have a few splinters of shrapnel in my ankles and knees, which bother me sometimes,'' he said. But he keeps fit, trains every morning, and is in good health.
He said, after the war, when documents were a problem in France, he was tempted to accept a false passport, but had decided against, realising, if he did, he would always have one foot on the wrong side of the line.
''During the war you picked up a lot of bad habits,'' he added disarmingly. ''If you have a problem the first reaction is to kill the guy, and that is not very healthy under normal conditions.''
He regards his book with some astonishment. It came about because he has a cousin in London who is a literary agent, and she encouraged him.
He had not written a history book, he insisted. It was a description of what happened to him, of the mistakes he made and the problems he had to deal with. He had fought his war as best he could, and he was not interested in bringing people to book. He could not make a living out of vengeance.
No Drums -- No Trumpets by Alec Le Vernoy is published by Michael Joseph at #12.95.
Jacques Ghémard le dimanche 14 août 2022 - Demander un contact Recherche sur cette contribution | |
