Helen Fry
Secret Agent: Unsung Hero
Helen Fry and Peter Dowding - Secret Agent, Unsung Hero
- Welcome to today’s session. I’m absolutely delighted, and it’s a privilege for Lockdown University to be hosting Peter Dowding today. He is a former Premier of Western Australia, a huge career in public life, but also he’s written the biography of his uncle Bruce Dowding entitled, “Secret Agent, Unsung Hero.” Peter, welcome to Lockdown University today.
Thank you very much, Helen. I’m very privileged, even though it’s one o'clock in the morning.
Well, you have a six-minute video, which you’d like us to share. I’ve seen it, of course, at your incredible book launch in Central London, and we thought it appropriate to show this six-minute video because it gives a very good introduction to what we’re going to discuss today. So if Hannah could very kindly facilitate the video. Thank you. And we’ll have our “In Conversation” as soon as this is finished.
[Narrator] This is a story of two men from different backgrounds whose lives intersected in wartime France. One of the men, Bruce Dowding, born in 1914, is the uncle of Peter Dowding, lawyer and 24th premier of Western Australia. Peter says his uncle growing up in Melbourne, excelled in sport and French. He applied for a course at the Sorbonne arriving in Paris in 1938.
He loved music, classical music, and classical art. And when he got to Paris, there was all of that, plus a joy that he experienced in Paris, and he fell in with an avant-garde painter from Sweden, Max Bilde and his beautiful sister, and fell in love with the sister, and so the whole of his 1938 period was exciting and entrancing.
[Narrator] With war imminent, Bruce Dowding could have returned home as his parents wanted, but did not. Instead, he joined the British Army as an interpreter.
“I hope you can understand how I feel when I tell you that I must do something,” something’s in quotes, “something because I’m here and because I must try and help these people who have helped me so much.” He really wanted to be an assistant to French people.
[Narrator] Harold Cole, the other man in this story, is English. Cole had been jailed in England as an habitual criminal. On release, he joined the British Army and volunteered for France. Peter Dowding describes Cole as an adulterer, a conman, a deserter, a thief.
I think that he was a psychopath. He was incorrigible. He had no feeling for people, really, and wherever he went, he took advantage as he saw it for himself.
[Narrator] In early 1941, Harold Cole and Bruce Dowding would meet in France, which at the time was divided into the occupied north and Vichy, unoccupied in the south. The young Australian could not have known that because of Cole’s betrayal, he was doomed to die.
Cole was also a man of bravado and self-aggrandizement and in the north of France, after France fell, he took it on himself to try and organise the local community who were helping escaped British servicemen. And he arranged for couriers to take them down to Marseille. Cole realised, I think, that there was money in this deal and took a lot of money, allegedly, intended for the people in the north. Bruce was sent north to try and sort the organisation out around Lille. Cole thought that the head of the organisation was coming on a train at a certain time to a certain station and took the Gestapo there. And it wasn’t Guerisse, the head of the organisation who stepped off the train. It was Bruce.
[Narrator] Up till that moment, Bruce Dowding had been helping French intellectuals and British servicemen escape France. Now, he would be taken by the Gestapo to Germany. He would face trial and unsurprisingly, be found guilty and sentenced to death. Bruce Dowding was beheaded by guillotine, a method favoured by the Nazis. His family knew nothing of the manner of his death until years later when a priest who had attended the execution wrote to them.
[Peter] “I feel obliged to give you some information about the last moments of your son, as I shall never forget the personality of your son, nor his way of facing death. Your son met his death in such a proud and manly way.”
[Interviewer] How do you feel about that?
Well, it’s a pretty sort of emotional thing, isn’t it?
[Narrator] Peter Dowding says his uncle was one of more than a hundred people betrayed by Cole, who himself was later shot by Paris Police. The nephew has researched the uncle’s story for 40 years. Now, there is a book.
Lawyers are not necessarily good authors, and I’m terribly grateful for my co-writer, Ken Spillman, for his marvellous expertise in putting my thoughts into sensible English and for his help in the crafting of the book.
[Interviewer] So what have you called it?
Well, we originally called it “Subterfuge,” but the publishers think there’s a better title, and their title is “Secret Agent, Unsung Hero: The Valour of Bruce Dowding.” There were many brave people in World War II, and my uncle was one of those people, and we should be proud of that.
Thank you very much. Extraordinary film and a very good introduction to what we’re going to talk about today. I want to dive in and talk about what he did risking his life for the escape lines. We know a little bit about the branch of military intelligence, MI9 that oversaw the escape lines in occupied France and elsewhere. And you discovered, didn’t you, during your research that your uncle who left no memoir actually was working for the escape lines. So could you give us an introduction to the kind of work he was doing, and do you know why and how he became involved in the escape lines?
Well, some of it’s conjecture, Helen, and some of it has come from other sources, but the principal issue seems to be that Bruce made it to the south away from the occupied north and out of the prisoner of war camp. And he was very familiar with France and could pass as a Frenchman, and he made it like, I think 6 million people fled south. And he went south and he met Donald Caskie, who is a very interesting character. He was the minister at Scott’s church in Paris, and he had fled south also. And when he got south, he set up a little hostel in the Seamen’s Mission building in Marseille, where he used to hide principally British serviceman. And Bruce and he became very friendly. And I think, and that’s the context in which Bruce stayed in Marseille to help work this escape line. The second thing about the escape line was that although MI9 existed, as you know, excuse me, as a result of your researchers, it actually didn’t have much of a resource. It was just a couple of people in London. It had someone in Gibraltar, and it was trying desperately to get money into France to help an organisation develop. And I think that Caskie and Bruce and a few others were very early starters in a process by which the many servicemen who were fleeing south were given a facility, some accommodation, and then were moved on towards the Pyrenees. Now, we also know that Bruce had become a Spanish speaker. He’d learn it as a Frenchman, as it were, so he could communicate French and Spanish without having to revert to a third , excuse me, of English. And he certainly, according to people in Marseille, he moved regularly between Perpignan and the border, and to Loos and back to Marseille to organise one of the most principally important aspects of this escape line, which was to get people out over the Pyrenees and for that, they needed guides.
And in the south of France, there were a very large number of Spanish separatists who’d been defeated by Franco and made it over the border into France, and had been locked up in really concentration camps near the border and many of them were anxious to earn money to buy arms, to go back in due course to attack Franco, so there were groups of them who were offering their services as guides in return for payment. Funnily enough, if you like, in the literature from the British side of it, they talked about these people as though they were smugglers or ne'er-do-wells. But in fact, the principal that Bruce dealt with, his name was Ponzan-Vidal, and he was a lawyer. Now, some people might say, “Ah, QED,” you know, vagabond or smuggler or whatever. But in fact, he was a very educated bloke, and he and his small group had offered themselves to MI9 through a diverse number of contacts to act as smugglers and Bruce, I think was the go-to man for the relationship with them. So first of all, there were heaps of servicemen coming down to Marseille. By early 1940, they were being locked up by Vichy, but many of them were able to escape, and there were still people coming down who hadn’t been locked up. And that was one line of people who were being brought down from the north and exited. And then MI9 as a policy made what might be seen as a pretty sensible choice and that is that the government of the British Army and Air Force had invested a huge amount of money training pilots. And so they prioritised pilots to get out through this process, although Army people did as well. And then there’s a third group trying to get out and we could talk about them separately and they, of course, were the very many principally Jewish, but not exclusively, intellectuals that were being helped by Varian Fry.
Yeah, I think it’s an opportune moment for us to talk about that, because I guess in your research, as I found in mine, we should never be surprised by what we’re going to discover. And you discovered this very grainy, well, it’s a blurred photograph, but it’s a really important photograph. I wonder if we could just put up the very first photograph, the group with Varian Fry. And can you talk us through this? So, it’s a wonderful photograph. Can you talk us through why this is significant? Because as we can see in that photograph, your uncle is actually standing next to Varian Fry, isn’t he?
He is. This photograph was a tiny little photograph which was sent to the family, I think in 1940, to show that Bruce was still alive. Someone got it out. There wasn’t an explanation about it. It was so small that really, until five years ago, I couldn’t see who was in it, except I could see Bruce’s face. Excuse me. And then I saw an advertisement for someone who was willing to help use computer technology to upgrade old family photos and I took this photograph to him, and lo and behold, this is what he produced. And as you see, I’ve put the names at the foot of the photograph, but it’s unquestionably Varian Fry and Nancy Wake and Albert Hirschman and this group of people are clearly friends. I mean, it’s a photograph of people working together. I believe that this photograph is pretty strong evidence that Bruce was involved with helping the Varian Fry group get their clients out of the area. One thing I would note is that in our research, Ken Spillman and I found that every time Varian had a big group of people going through Perpignan and into the Pyrenees, we’re able to show that Bruce was there. We’ve been able to independently demonstrate that. And for a long while, Bruce was regarded as the key man in the MI9 group in Perpignan at the Hotel de la Loge and that’s exactly where Varian Fry was accommodating the people on the way out. And those people were people whom Bruce would’ve been absolutely delighted to meet because he was very passionate about art and music and literature and the people Varian Fry was helping were people like Chagall and Matisse and many others who were being helped by this organisation that had been funded from America to precisely target these intellectuals and get them out of France. I don’t know if anyone watches Netflix, but there was recently a Netflix series called “Transatlantic Crossing.” And I don’t think anyone would be very happy to say it was a good story about Varian Fry and his organisation and his bravery, but nevertheless, it did illustrate what he was doing and the people he was working with. Of course, he didn’t mention Bruce in the series, but Varian was very determined to help these intellectuals and they were principally Jewish people who were trying to escape Germany.
Yeah, ‘cause Eleanor Roosevelt had given Varian Fry a list of 200, hadn’t she? Mainly Jewish intellectuals, artists, so cultural intellectuals. And when he was in Marseille, he found so many more than that. And it’s an extraordinary rescue effort because of course, he had no support from the local American Consulate and the ambassador so fascinating that Bruce is amongst them because in all of the histories of MI9, the branch of military intelligence for the escape lines, and in any of the histories of the escape lines, he doesn’t appear, so this is remarkable that you’ve been able to find that your uncle was key person, if not the key person, in Varian Fry’s network. That’s unbelievable, isn’t it? And I guess.
It was an astonishing thing to find out. And Helen, the other aspect of our research, which I hadn’t appreciated when I started digging in five or 10 years ago, was that MI9 was actually funding Varian Fry at one point, so there was a bit of a swap going on, promises and undertakings and so on, and all sorts of really larger than life characters who were involved in trying to get money into the area and the organisations to help both of them get out over the Pyrenees.
Can you say a little bit about Nancy Wake? Because she’s famously known, isn’t she, for being one of the agents of SOE, the Special Operations Executive. And to be honest, I had no idea that she was in Marseille and that she had any connection with Varian Fry. I mean, that again, is very extraordinary, isn’t it?
It is. Nancy Wake at that stage, was married to a guy called Fiocca who I think was a bit of a black marketeer, and they lived a pretty, I might say, comfortable life in Marseille, near the centre of Marseille. And she wrote an autobiography in which she had talked about this period in her life, and she said at the time in the book that when she met Bruce, she’s actually New Zealander, but she’s an honorary Australian. And she says in the book, when she discovered Bruce was Australian, they fell upon each other and embraced as fellow countrymen, and she was thrilled and she had a big Christmas lunch at which she had Bruce as an attendee. And Nancy Wake was a very assertive woman. In her later life, she was even more assertive because as a side issue, she went and checked into one of the most expensive hotels in London when she was, I think in her eighties or nineties. And when they asked her who was going to pay the bill after, she’d been there for two weeks, she said, “Send it to the bloody Australian Government.” And the rumour is that the now King Charles III and some of his friends helped to defray the bill, but in real life at the time, she was with Mr. Fiocca and then he was arrested and she returned to England, and then she was dropped into France as part of the SOE, and she was with the marquee, the armed marquee, and fighting with them and very bravely dealing with the end of the war and the defeat of the Germans in France. So she’s a very, a very interesting person. And I think Albert Hirschman is also fascinating. He escaped over when Varian Fry and Albert Hirschman were forced to leave in 1941, they made it over the Pyrenees back to the USA and Hirschman became a professor at one of the American universities and quite an important intellectual. So that’s a picture, a group of people who are a really, very important in the story of the flow of people out of France during the war who were oppressed one way or another by the Germans and by Vichy France.
And I think you are hoping, aren’t you, that as a result of our conversation today, that maybe there is somebody in America who’s been helped by this group, who’ve been helped by Varian Fry or your uncle or anywhere across the world? I think in this multimedia age, we’re hoping that there will be connections. So you are still researching, you are still hoping to hear from people who may be watching this today?
Well, it would be fascinating because Varian Fry was an inveterate photographer and in the, I think it’s the University of Cleveland, there is a huge collection of Varian Fry pictures that made their way back to the USA. And of course, we haven’t the resources to get someone to spend days going through a collection like that, but we would love to hear from anyone that had any information about that because it’s such an important story. Varian Fry’s story was told after the war in a book called “Surrender on Demand,” which was a reference to the clause in the agreement, the amnesty, that brought peace initially between the Germans and the French, the armistice, I’m sorry, that the Vichy French had to surrender on demand anyone that the Germans demanded from them. And of course, the Germans began to demand the return of Jews to be taken to concentration camps, and that was a very important issue that Varian Fry was fighting during the time he was there.
Could we just take the photograph down for a moment while we continue our “In Conversation?” We’ve got one more to show shortly, but but not quite yet. So can you give us a sense then of how dangerous was the work that your uncle was doing? I mean, we just think, you know, is he moving around that part of France? Is he really risking his life? Or was it in fact, incredibly dangerous?
Well, the first thing I think that has to be observed is that Vichy France was made up of people who was still opposed to the Germans, but the overwhelming number of people involved in security and policing were pro-German and they were arresting people regularly. Many of the people in the line that became known as the Pat Line, had been arrested and were kept incarcerated for various periods of time. And for anybody working specifically getting people out of France, that they were at risk. There was a Milice, the sort of private police of the Vichy French who were very actively tracking down miscreants as they might describe them, and arresting them and taking them off and holding them in jails in a number of places in the south. And the people who were working with the Spanish separatists were also very much at risk because many of them had been held in concentration camps and were not permitted to leave them. So there was a whole ad mixture of people who were acting under the cover of various organisations and were certainly at risk. Risk escalated by a huge amount once you went north of the occupied zone. But even in Vichy France in 1940 and '41, there were still considerable risks to be had by anybody working in this area.
And there are so many characters we could home in on in your book that worked alongside your uncle. We don’t have time, but I’d really, you know, encourage people to buy the book and to read it. It is an amazing story and just extraordinary. But I want to ask you about one in particular who I was fascinated by, the oil magnate Nubar Gulbenkian. I don’t know if I pronounced his name correctly.
Gulbenkian, yeah.
Yeah, Gulbenkian. That’s right. So I mean, most people probably think, wasn’t he a bit of a rogue? I mean, he was working with the escape lines and British intelligence. Do you want to just say a little bit about him?
Well, look, Gulbenkian was an extraordinary bloke. The family was Armenian and his father was said to be the richest man in the world because he owned so much of the oil in the Middle East. And his son was a bit of a dilettante. I think he was gay and he mixed with royalty in England. He wore a poppy or a flower in his buttonhole, dressed impeccably, had diplomatic papers and moved fairly freely. His father, I think, has established one of the big museums in Portugal. And at the time, his father was alive and Gulbenkian was free with his money and MI9 got him to come into the south of France to help drop some money around for people to operate. We found as we were looking for these threads of stories, and Helen, you of all people know how these threads lead to threads and more threads. We actually found he’d written an autobiography and it was really fun because he’d mixed with royalty in carriage racing, which is something that the Duke of Edinburgh was very committed to. And there’s this larger than life bloke wandering around the south of occupied France, and I think might even have gone into occupied France, dropping money as directed and being a liaison. I think he was so visible that it became a bit dangerous, and he was there early on in 1940. I think they stopped using him as an agent, because really he couldn’t be called undercover by any stretch of imagination.
He was a bit too visible, if you like.
He was.
In that six-minute film, we do learn a bit, don’t we, about the treachery of one man in particular, Harold Cole. I mean, that’s something which I still struggle with, actually, the betrayal of these escape lines, of the helpers. Someone like Cole did the horrific thing of betraying so many. And you managed to link your uncle’s betrayal to Harold Cole, didn’t you? Because presumably when you started writing and wanted to find more about Bruce, you had no idea. I mean, we can read the book now and think this is fantastic and the sheer level of research. But actually you started out with very little. Do you want to comment on that whole treachery?
Well, Cole had a history of being a thief. He’d been in prison. And when he got out, he joined the army and then he stole from the sergeant’s mess and was locked up in the north of France before the fall of France. He sort of started to pretend to the people in Lille, he was living with a French woman there, that he was a captain of intelligence and many of them had servicemen hiding in their houses. The people in the north were so game and so brave and so supportive that they looked after hundreds of servicemen who wanted to get out, but had no mechanism to do it. And he organised a couple of young fellows. One was a Scott called Jimmy Smith, and one was a Frenchman called Le Pierre and he organised them as couriers to take some of the people hiding in the houses down to the south of France. And when they got down there, they were given money to bring back and help support the people who were looking after these servicemen. And your watchers will know that in France, at that time, food was rationed and was terribly short. Clothing was rationed, it was terribly short. Anyone that took an extra mouth on board was really eating into their resources, so some money was vital. And Cole realised that there was money and he went down, and you don’t need the full detail, but he went down and raised, allegedly, took some people down there, certainly took a few, and then got the money and took it back for the group in the north around Lille and that money disappeared. And that was the beginning of a real problem in the organisation. Cole smooched up to the head of the organisation, a bloke called Captain Garrow. He smooched up to him, and I think Garrow quite liked him. Cole knew how to deal with his superiors. But when Albert Guerisse took over, a Belgian security agent, tough as nuts, he wasn’t going to take any smooching from a bloke like Cole. And he called Cole and some others down and proved that Cole was stealing and smashed him in the face with his fist and they were actually going to kill Cole, but Cole took off and went back up north. And he’d been under the view of the Gestapo because he’d been so open and so failing to have any sort of regard for being undercover, that eventually he was picked up. And according to the interpreter who was there during his first interview with the Gestapo, he just coughed, as they say, he just told the whole story without restraint, without any pressure. And then went round with the Gestapo, pointing out the people who had helped the organisation. And over a period of weeks, he went round identifying people and eventually he was taken down to Paris and identified people in Paris who’d been part of the organisation as well, so he really did cause a terrible grief. And we’ve been able to demonstrate, more than a hundred people were arrested as a result of his treachery and many of them were transported to concentration camps or were executed.
Can we now at this point actually show the second slide, and can you talk to us about this, because of course, it involves the horrific death of your own uncle. So yes, can you just explain to us the events around end of June, 1943 and this whole thing with the guillotine? 'Cause I was actually really shocked. I hadn’t actually picked that up in my own research.
Well, first, I’d introduce it by saying that the Germans in December, 1941, at about the time the Americans came into the war, had announced the policy called Nacht und Nebel, Night and Fog. And the policy was that anyone who had engaged in undercover activities in occupied territories would be arrested, deported to Germany, tried and sentenced to death without any record being kept in the country of their origin, so they disappeared effectively into the night and fog And all the people who were arrested with Bruce were transported in that way, as were many, many other people. And they were tried in early 1943 and taken to the special prison in Dortmund where the guillotine was set up and on the night of the 30th of June, they were executed. And this is a typical sort of German recordkeeping in a way because it shows exactly the time at which each of them was executed. And the first group, one to nine are all political prisoners. And they were executed in quick order, half an hour to execute nine people. The second lot of people were then executed. And it’s interesting to note, at the very foot of this document, that some of them were criminals and some were homosexuals. It’s a ghastly record because to see 18 people, including some women, just executed in that way in the space of an hour is horrific. And we heard from the priest who’d been at the executions, who’d secretly kept a record himself of who the political prisoners were and where they were from, that they were held behind the curtain, let out from behind the curtain, executed, and the next person was let in. So this record is a bland typescript of a horrific event. And there were many, many of these horrific events in Germany in the 1940s.
Can we take the slide down now? Just got two or three more questions before we will today open up for our audience to ask you questions and I’ll monitor the questions when they come in shortly and ask you those. So you’ve been on or are on a campaign, aren’t you, for your government, for the Australian nation to recognise Bruce because it’s extraordinary, given all his heroism, the French offered him a Legion d'honneur, didn’t they? If I’m not mistaken.
Yes.
But can you tell us about that? Why has he not been recognised?
Well, what happened was that the French Government communicated with the Australian Government, and we’ve had this from the Australian archives saying, “We’d like to offer this posthumous Legion d'honneur.” And the Australian Government asked around and said, “Well, this guy wasn’t in the Australian Forces,” but someone in the Prime Minister’s department said, “Oh, I know who it is. It’s the family Dowding from Melbourne who lost their son,” and so on. But the response to the French government was, we don’t think it’s appropriate to deal with issues of awards from foreign governments, and that was it, full stop, end of story. It wasn’t communicated to the family and they didn’t know about it at all until I found it in Australian Government archives that this had been offered. And we’ve been sort of tinkering with the idea of trying to get the French government to reinstate the offer. We haven’t given up yet, but it hasn’t happened. And we’ve also sought the Australian Government to give some recognition to Bruce for the work that he did, and that hasn’t happened yet, but we’re still trying. And one of the things, Helen, which was remarkable, and you saw a little of it in London when we had our launch at the Australia House, how many people came to that event who had connections with this story. Well, we then went to Dortmund and we then went to Brussels and we then went to Lille and then to Abbeville and then to Paris and then to Loos in six weeks. And there were many, many people who were so connected to this story and so enthusiastic for some recognition for Bruce, so we haven’t given up working on it, although the key thing is that in my mind, in my family, we do recognise him for his heroism.
Yeah. And I was thinking, of course, with his work with Varian Fry, clearly absolutely involved in rescuing Jewish intellectuals with Varian Fry. I think I know the answer to this, but I’ll ask you anyway. Presumably he hasn’t been recognised at Yad Vashem.
He hasn’t. And we were in Toulouse about three weeks ago, and they showed us their archive on Ponzan-Vidal, who I mentioned earlier as the Spanish separatist. And I got a certificate, I saw a certificate of recognition for him. He was murdered by the Germans as they were leaving France in 1944. But I saw a certificate dated 1945 or '46, signed by Dwight Eisenhower, recognising Ponzan-Vidal’s service for the Americans who he helped over Spain. And I see one of your listeners has an uncle who was an American pilot. Many American pilots were helped by the Pat Line as it emerged after America had joined the war and by the Spanish separatists.
So I am now going to take some of these questions, which are coming in. I’m not brilliant with technology, but here we go.
Q&A and Comments:
There is two questions actually about myself. Now, I myself am not related to Varian Fry. So there’s a comment here. The Field Museum in Chicago had a wonderful exhibition showing or an exhibit showing all the artists who were saved. The surviving spies each gave a talk. “As a Canadian,” says Carole, “I had no idea all the famous important artists had been smuggled out.”
- That’s very true. When I started researching this, I read a book called “Villa Air-Bel,” and it was about a villa that Varian Fry hired on the edge of Marseille that was packed with these people, these painters and their writers and musicians and Peggy Guggenheim went there and started picking up works of art at a very cheap rate because people had no money and were very desperate for some cash. And I said to my family at the time, “Look, I cannot imagine that Bruce would’ve been within five kilometres of a villa in Marseille that held all those people and not been able to sniff it out.” I feel justified now 'cause I’m sure he was there.
Q - We’ve had a question, although you touched on it, but I think it was quite brief in the film, someone’s asked, “What happened to Harold Cole?” So perhaps you could just reiterate what happened to him in the end. There was a justice.
A - There was. Eventually MI9 sent a captain out to find him specifically from the UK, chased his path over the border into Germany because he’d gone off with the head of the Gestapo in Paris and Cole had driven him into Germany to get a safe house for him. And Cole was then working with the Americans pretending to be Captain Cole of British intelligence. They tracked him down, they arrested him, they took him back to Paris, put him in jail, debated who was to hang him, couldn’t work it out. And in the meantime, Cole escaped and he lived in Paris until January, 1946. And I actually have the actual newspaper. The police heard there was someone who might be a deserter in a house. They went in on the 9th of January, 1946. Cole allegedly pulled a gun and they shot him dead and it was on the front page of two of the Paris newspapers for the next day. And I went into a funny little shop in Paris and bought the actual newspapers, which still existed. So that was justice I felt, to have that piece of news. But Cole was shot by Paris Police. Allegedly they didn’t know who he was, but I don’t believe that. I think they knew who he was and they tracked him down.
Q - Yeah, we’ve had another question on could you comment on the connection with Marc Chagall? So there’s clearly some connection. Do you think your uncle met or helped Chagall to escape from Marseille?
A - I’m pretty sure that he helped Chagall and Matisse and some of the others to get from Perpignan to the border and then over the border into Spain. There was a couple of young energetic people, young Jewish people who were there helping, and when they ran out of puff, the Ponzan-Vidal’s group were used to help people and guide them and I’m sure that was something that Bruce was engaged with.
Yeah, we’ve a message from Donna Sims, and perhaps this Donna’s email can be sent to you afterwards via Lockdown. She’s saying, “I have an uncle who was an American pilot shot down over France and who must have escaped to Spain via Bruce Dowding’s network. So if you’re interested, please contact me,” she says. So amazing, you’ve got someone else to your research. The research never finishes, does it? And it’s great-
It doesn’t. I suspect because Bruce, because the Americans didn’t come into the war until December, 1941. I don’t think Bruce himself was helping American pilots, but the Pat Line certainly did. And the Pat Line really existed even after the arrest of Guerisse in 1943. It continued under other names. So if he came out through Marseille and the south of France, it would undoubtedly have been the Pat Line and I’m very happy to send a link to Ms. Sims.
We have a comment from Susan that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., they mounted exhibition on Varian Fry’s life mission. They may have some more information that would be helpful to your research. I don’t know whether you’ve used that museum in your research.
We did use that… We did use that museum. and I think we got some initial copies of the trial material from that museum. I’d have to see it. I’ve got 50 gigs of research over all these years, but all of those museums have been so helpful that I’m sure we did get some material. But you know, Helen, as you would know, you can go back to these places time and time and time again and get new material. It’s almost scary. Like I’ve written a book. Why don’t I just shut up and sit down and enjoy my 80 years? But it is very tempting to go back to these places and see what else there is. That’s for sure.
Q - So do you think the research is finished for you now that you’ve written the book or will you continue?
A - My wife is sleeping in the bedroom nearby and I have to say this very quietly. I would love to write a story about what happened to Cole, but she is pretty against writing more books. It’s been a very tough gig to mix that with a professional life, so I’m not sure.
Q - And during your research, we’ve had a question on the research. How important is it, or was it for you to visit places? You travelled, didn’t you? We saw a photograph, a still of you visiting your uncle’s grave. To you, how important is it that we visit these places?
A - Well, there are two reasons. There are three reasons for doing it. One is that the atmosphere of these places can be terribly instructive when you’re trying to write a history. And secondly, it does give you a feel for the reality that people lived through. And then the third reason is because you meet people who were participants or whose family were participants, and you understand what enormous pressures many of them were under for the period that you’re writing about. And I think that’s been one of the most wonderful aspects particularly of this trip we did just recently through Europe where we met you in London. It’s so important to humanise these stories. They’re not just academic exercises. And that’s been, I think, shown to be of immense value when you’re writing it.
Q - But can I ask, as we sort of round up today, because I’m well aware it’s getting towards 2:00 a.m. where you are. It’s been wonderful to talk to you about this really extraordinary life of your uncle and I really urge people to buy the book, to read it. And you can see I’ve got a copy behind me, and Peter has a shot of it behind him. Can I ask as our final question today, what do you think is Bruce’s legacy? Why is it important that we learn about his story today? What’s the message? Do you think… Well, the book that you’ve written, does it have a message for us today?
A - Look, I think the answer is firstly, to remind us how hideous war is. How absolutely, how it disrupts and creates horrifying circumstances. A pretty apt sort of time to be thinking about that. And the second reason for writing the book, I guess, is that even when people disappear or die, they have left a legacy and I think we should celebrate that legacy. And in the book, it’s certainly Bruce’s legacy, but he was just an ordinary guy. You know, he wasn’t a hero. He didn’t start off as a hero. He was just a really decent fellow, much beloved in my family. I never knew him because I was born the year he was executed, 80 years ago. But he was much beloved by my father and by his other brother, by his parents, by the people he knew and the school he went to, Wesley. We’re so honoured that the school has kept alive the record of where he went as a student and where he was a teacher. So, I’m thrilled, if you like, to be able to recognise that legacy and also point out to people how ordinary people really matter in the world.
That’s marvellous. Peter, thank you so much for what’s been a really inspirational “In Conversation” today. Thank you for joining us all the way from Australia. And please, I do urge you to read this extraordinary book about Bruce Dowding and you’ll learn so much more about that difficult period. And if you think you have something connected to the story, then please do reach out to Peter. He is on Facebook and yeah, the journey hopefully, will continue. But may I give a huge thanks to you, Peter, from Lockdown University. Thank you.
Thank you very much to everybody for listening and Helen, to you particularly, 'cause your research is also a great stepping stone for people like me, so thank you very much.
Thank you. Take care, everyone.