Agent Josephine, page 42
The stricken aircraft was surrounded by a mass of flotsam and jetsam – mostly Josephine’s tour trunks. Fortunately help was at hand. A squadron of Senegalese Tirailleurs – colonial French infantry, recruited from the West African nation of Senegal – happened to be bathing in a nearby cove. As one they dived in, swam out to the slowly sinking aircraft, seized individuals and tour luggage and brought all to land. Thus it was that Josephine was saved, and set foot once more on French soil held aloft by a phalanx of African warriors.9
Apart from cuts and bruises, the main damage done was to Josephine’s tour luggage. Soaked in seawater though it all was, the show had to go on, especially as two of the anti-aircraft batteries that defended the Corsican airbases had been christened Josephine and J’ai Deux Amours in her honour. While Josephine had claimed two enemy warplanes shot down, J’ai Deux Amours had accounted for double that number. With the Goéland being a write-off, they used a trusty Glenn Martin for all further transport, the tour group flitting from airbase to airbase, where Josephine performed to crowds of 30,000 at a time.
Her final show was at a vast military base ‘floodlit’ with truck lights, where ranks of warplanes were lined up, heavy with their bomb loads, and poised to fly into mainland France. Josephine sang with an emotion and intensity rarely witnessed, as she tried to tear away ‘the great black veil thrown over the country’ – over France – so that every single one of those bombers could make it through to their targets.10 After she was finished she threw herself down on a camp-bed, fully clothed and exhausted, even as the first of the bomber formations roared thunderously into the skies.
Four months later, in October 1944, Josephine sailed for France aboard a Liberty Ship – mass-produced cargo-vessels built in their thousands for the Allied war effort – which would dock at recently liberated Marseilles. Her espionage role was pretty much finished by now, but much else remained to be done. Josephine’s morale-boosting duties would last until the final guns had fallen silent, as she performed throughout the winter of 1944–45 to front-line troops across Europe and even as far away as Great Britain.
One of her biggest regrets was leaving behind her menagerie – her tour animals – in North Africa. During the long years of sickness they had gradually been lost to her, including even Bonzo, her Great Dane. In any case she was formally a soldier now, and there was little scope for carrying such wayward cargoes aboard Allied warships. There was one consolation. She’d acquired a small dog, which she had managed to sneak aboard hidden under her coat. She’d given him the martial-sounding name of Mitraillette – little machinegun – not because he was particularly fierce, but because he peed like that, in little rat-tat-tat bursts.
Mitraillette was smuggled aboard secreted beneath her Air Force blue uniform coat, complete with the gold epaulettes of a lieutenant. Over the decades, Josephine had had the world’s top designers competing with each other to fashion clothes especially for her, and she had worn some of the world’s most famous – and famously-revealing – examples of haute couture on stage. But it was of this outfit, her French military uniform, that she would remain most proud for the rest of her days.
That same month, October 1944, Josephine arrived back in Paris. The war would continue for another seven months, but to many the liberation of this city felt like victory. Across Paris a witch-hunt was under way for collaborators. Passions were running high, and the most egregious offenders more often than not met with unfortunate ends. By contrast, Josephine was viewed as an outstanding heroine… but not by all. ‘She came back to France more French than Louis XIV,’ musician Alain Romains, who had worked on some of her movie scores, remarked. ‘I said to her, “It was very nice of you to save France for us, Josephine.”’11
Yet such criticism was rare.
Shortly after arriving back in Paris, Josephine was invited to sing there once more – now that the enemy had been evicted – in a gala show in aid of the French Air Force. It was in three sections, the final of which was entirely hers. Discarding her lieutenant’s uniform, she chose to wear a sweeping, elegant, high-waisted dress, with ruched – pleated, puffy – shoulders, based upon a classic 1900s design. Many of the songs she sung were the old favourites composed for her by Vincent Scotto, whose classic – ‘J’ai Deux Amours’ – rounded off her repertoire, to which she received a standing ovation.
Columbia Records invited her into their studio, to record some tunes to celebrate victory. They were released in early 1945, together with the caption: ‘Thank you, charming officer, for having been heroic and for singing once again for us.’12
But of course, the liberation of Paris didn’t mean the war was at an end. As General de Lattre de Tassigny’s French 1st Army advanced towards Germany – the general had escaped from prison to command the French ground war – Josephine was asked to restart her morale-boosting work. As a lieutenant in the French Air Force, her orders were to carry out ‘theatrical tours for the units engaged’, and ‘galas organised for the benefit of the troops or of prisoners and deportees’.13
Over the winter of 1944–45, Josephine returned to her front-line duties with a vengeance. From Belfort, Mulhouse, Colmar, Strasbourg and Nancy she followed the foremost units as they punched across the Rhine and into Germany itself, to Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Hamburg… She sang in the biting chills and cold, in the thick and clinging mud, and even as the enemy counter-attacked, shells bursting violently in the snow. Everywhere she went – sometimes on foot, sometimes by jeep, singing to groups of soldiers in barns lit by oil-lanterns, or in the open in the freezing conditions – she eschewed special treatment, declaring, defiantly: ‘I’m a soldier too…’14
With Allied forces driving ever deeper into Germany, the war in Europe would be declared won on VE Day, 8 May 1945 (VJ Day – Victory in Japan – being declared on 2 September 1945). Nine days earlier, on 29 April, Josephine had visited London, at Churchill’s personal behest, headlining a victory show in aid of Allied forces and performing at the Adelphi Theatre.15 From there she would travel north, to RAF Elvington, in Yorkshire, to perform to the 25,000 mostly French Air Force personnel who were based there. In his diary, airman Pierre-Célestin Delrieu noted his surprise and wonder that a figure of her stature had somehow found the time and wherewithal to visit.
‘Josephine Baker, yes, Josephine Baker, came to surprise us one day, in all her charm,’ he wrote. ‘Proudly wearing the cap and uniform of the French Air Force, with two gold stripes, we saw Lt. Baker climb onto an improvised stage inside the largest of the hangars… It was a spectacular triumph. The climactic point was when she sang “Two Loves: My Country and Paris” [J’ai Deux Amours]. There were cheers, encores and tears on people’s faces.’16
Josephine returned to Paris, appearing at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where she had performed two decades earlier in an altogether different kind of a show – La Revue Nègre. General de Gaulle was in the audience, and in the programme was reprinted one of his wartime letters in which he commended ‘the few’, those who had listened to their hearts and joined the Resistance. ‘It is the heart that was right,’ de Gaulle concluded.17 This time, all was elegance for Josephine’s show, in which she changed costumes fully nine times. She was also invited to be the guest of honour at a dinner held for the Resistance – those involved in some of the most bitter and bloody fighting, and who were celebrating not only victory but sheer survival.
Shortly, Josephine’s duties would take her into recently liberated Berlin, where she would perform at a gala dinner for senior Allied generals hosted at the world-famous Justizpalast – the Palace of Justice – on Littenstrasse. The Justizpalast was the city’s second largest building and a stunning architectural triumph, but it had been reduced to a rat-infested semi-ruin by the predations of the war. Four artistic troupes were on the programme, hailing from Great Britain, the USSR, the USA and France. Josephine had the honour of representing France, along with Colette Mars, the young singer and actress with whom she would strike up a close friendship.
The Justizpalast was illuminated by searchlights, reminiscent of so many of Josephine’s North African shows, but thankfully there was little danger of coming under attack. Still, the impression cast on the harshly lit and bomb-damaged building was as if it were burning – fire-racked and war-ravaged. Josephine was last to take the stage, enjoying rapturous applause from an audience dripping with glittering medals and braid. She told herself the clapping was not for her. It was for a country that had adopted her two decades earlier, embracing her hunger to flourish and to shine. A nation that had risen phoenix-like from the horrors of the Occupation, to be present at the triumph of good over evil.18
That Justizpalast gala was fine for the top brass and the dignitaries, but it did little for the common soldier. Josephine and her troupe sought out a small cinema in Berlin’s French quarter. There, they began a daily routine, non-stop from ten in the morning until just short of midnight. Troops were ushered in two hundred at a time, the theatre crammed to bursting. To show their appreciation, the soldiers handed Josephine bundles of ‘good conduct’ certificates, which had been doled out by the Nazis, and which they’d salvaged from the cellars beneath the Reichstag building. Via those, they joked, with biting irony, Josephine was guaranteed a fine Aryan heritage for the rest of her days.19
Josephine would be made the principal guest at any number of Allied victory ceremonies, most notably at the magnificent hilltop fortress of the Hohenzollern Castle, the historic seat of the German royal family, the imperial House of Hohenzollern. There, she would take the seat of honour in the grandiose throne room, her very presence representing a powerful symbol of the triumph over Nazi-era prejudices and evils.20
If Josephine had ever had cause to doubt the justness of her struggle and of the Allied cause, all such misgivings were about to be swept away. Her visit to Germany would end with her performing for the sick and the dying of the Buchenwald concentration camp, on the outskirts of Weimar in east-central Germany. The terrible things she bore witness to at Buchenwald would underscore the righteousness of all that she had been fighting for, proving a powerful embodiment both of the horrors of Nazism and of the need for good to prevail.
The Allied high command had asked for someone – any entertainer –who might be willing to enter the Buchenwald death camp, which was riven with typhus, a highly-infectious and potentially deadly disease. Despite her long history of sickness, Josephine stepped forward. Upon arrival at Buchenwald she became aware of hordes of ghostly, skeletal figures – inmates from across the nations of the world who had crawled towards the camp’s cruel perimeter, interlocking their fingers with the barbed wire; who had perished like that, collapsing, their hands ripped to shreds, their dead eyes staring empty and wide. She went wherever she was asked in the camp, regardless of the risk, seeking to comfort and to give solace, and to embue a spirit of hope which might save any who could be saved. But many in the typhus wards were already too far gone.21
Regardless, she sang for them, her voice low and lilting, suffused with raw emotion. All around her, faces lit up with smiles. Even on the verge of death the prisoners of Buchenwald were still trying to live. To hold onto life. So brave. Josephine had to reciprocate – and so she sang. She sang a song called “In My Village” – one she hoped would speak to every person who was there. But even as she sang, the words were choked with emotion. The song portrays a simple village, the paths winding through it, and of the church and the ringing of the bells. But for Josephine, it evoked dark memories.
A few weeks back she had witnessed how, in their death throes, the forces of Nazi Germany had stolen bells from churches across occupied Europe, to melt down so they could be transformed into weapons of war. In fact, over 175,000 had been looted, as the Nazis plundered the very soul and the beliefs of the nations they had invaded.22 Now, as she sang, she saw the steeples of those dessecrated churches reflected in the gaze of the Buchenwald imates, those who were on the verge of death. She heard the sound of the bells pealing in the gasping and the hollow rasp of their breathing. Somehow, it gave her strength. Somehow, she found again her voice. As she poured out her heart, her compassion, her pain at their pain, she began to notice that all around her faces were streaked with tears. And then she realised that she too was crying. But as the tears poured down, she understood how it was no longer with grief or with despair. Instead, these were tears of joy and tears of love.23
For her wartime service, Josephine Baker would duly be awarded the Medal of the Resistance with Rosette, the Croix de Guerre, and she would be appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. Approaching five decades after her death in 1975, she would be interred in the crypt of the Panthéon, a foremost monument in Paris reserved as a resting place for those considered as the nation’s foremost National Heroes. Less than one hundred individuals – and only five women – have been awarded such a high distinction. The ceremony at the Panthéon concentrated on Josephine Baker’s legacy as a Resistance figure and as an anti-Nazi, and a figurehead for the civil rights movement – a ‘life dedicated to the twin quests for liberty and justice’, according to the French president’s office.
As one of Josephine’s senior commanders would declare of her North African work, in particular: ‘Her actions in Morocco during the troubled period at the end of ’43 and beginning of ’44 were officially recognised as having powerfully underpinned a very precarious situation… For a year General Billotte… charged “Josephine” with particularly delicate missions, which she always fulfilled with an intelligence and devotion…’24 It was a view that General Billotte had himself fully endorsed. Colonel Paul Paillole, the 12 Apostles, Commander Wilfred Dunderdale and countless others would echo such sentiments, declaring that Josephine – and Jacques Abtey’s – work on behalf of the French, British and American intelligence services had been of crucial importance.
The war years had proved transformational for Josephine. They were her awakening; truly her coming of age. From global superstar and darling of stage, screen and song, she had become a heroine of the Resistance and a secret hero of the shadow wars of espionage on behalf of the Allies. She had also become, and would increasingly serve as a powerful advocate for freedom and justice in all its forms. It was the dawn of a new mission for Josephine, which would go on to distinguish her post-war life and work. In that, she would remain unwavering and unbreakable until her dying day.
Epilogue
In the spring of 1946, Josephine Baker would return to Château des Milandes, with the help of Don Wyatt, the United Services Overseas representative who had first proposed that she should tour Allied troops, in North Africa. Wyatt drove a Red Cross truck laden with her possessions, and he helped her retrieve many of her valuables, which had been hidden with friends in the surrounding community during the war years. Jacques Abtey joined them, but he would confide in a private moment to Wyatt that he was not intending to marry Josephine – if that were indeed on the cards – because he could not countenance being ‘Monsieur Baker’; in other words, living in her shadow.1
Whatever the truth of the matter, Josephine didn’t seem to take great umbrage. Indeed, she vowed to keep a house for Abtey in the château grounds, for whenever he wanted to visit. The partnership forged between them during the war years would prove powerful and enduring, as would Josephine’s connection to North Africa. Shortly, she would throw a party at her Le Vésinet, Paris, home. It had been seized by the enemy during the Occupation and so had required some tender loving care and renovation. The guest of honour was El Glaoui, the Governor of Marrakesh and Lord of the Atlas. El Glaoui was the Moroccan chief with closest ties to the French Government at that time, but he had paid a high price for victory. He had lost a son in the battle for Monte Cassino in spring 1944.
Amid the victory celebrations and the reclaiming of her two homes, perhaps unsurprisingly the heavy toll of the war years began to catch up with Josephine. Testament to the risks she had run, another American woman, Mildred Harnack, had been beheaded in February 1943, on Hitler’s personal orders, due to the resistance and espionage work she had carried out in Germany.2 In June 1946, a few months after her fortieth birthday, Josephine was rushed into hospital, facing her fifth operation in as many years. Four months later, she was still in hospital, when, on 6 October 1946, she was awarded her first decoration for her war service, the Medaille de la Résistance Avec Rosette. In an emotionally-charged ceremony, it was presented to her by General de Gaulle’s daughter, Madame de Boisseau, along with senior figures from the French military, plus a representative of the League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, Jean-Pierre Bloch.
General de Gaulle had penned a letter to accompany the medal. It read:
Dear Mademoiselle Josephine Baker,
In full awareness of the present circumstances I wish to address to you my wholehearted congratulations on your receipt of the Distinction of the Résistance Française Award. I was in recent years able to see and fully appreciate the great services you rendered at some of the most critical moments. I was subsequently all the more moved to learn of the enthusiasm and generosity you deployed to put your immense talent at the disposal of our cause and those who served it. My wife and I wish you a speedy recovery…
Charles de Gaulle3
There were headlines in the newspapers, proclaiming how this showbiz star was actually a secret agent of France, and how she had been decorated in recognition of her war service. Very few Frenchwomen would be granted such an honour, though there had been many who had served in the Resistance.
