Journey Into the Night

The shaky old Marshal did not even know where he was going as his train chuffed out of the Vichy station and, gathering speed, bored through the darkness toward Occupied France. Feeling the chilled air of winter seeping through the window sashes and around the drawn curtains of his car, the old Marshal doubtless shivered a little more when he wondered what sort of demands he would receive at the end of this journey to the unknown. Perhaps he knew just what he was prepared to concede. More likely he realized, as did the world, that from collaboration there is no return.

That night Marshal Henri Philippe Petain spent aboard his train. Next morning, under sealed orders, the train crossed the demarkation line at Moulins. Eighty miles southeast of Paris it was shunted off on a branch line near the town of St.-Florentin, where another special train waited. In that train, his Falstaffian sides swaddled in uniform, sat Hermann Wilhelm Goeing. Marshal Petain had been told to wear civilian clothes.

What Hermann Goeing and Henri Petain talked about on this, their first meeting; what the lesser men in their entourage--Vice Premier Admiral Jean Franc,ois Darlan, Ambassador to Paris Fernand de Brinon, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Ambassador Otto Abetz--said to one another was not revealed as the meeting ended. There were many subjects to discuss, many tidbits of concessions that the Germans could offer, most notably the release of the 1,500,000 war prisoners and the restoration of Paris to Vichyfrance. The Germans wanted the Marshal to sign some sort of all-out collaboration document; they wanted North Africa and the French Fleet.

How much Marshal Petain conceded in his meeting at St.-Florentin did not matter particularly. From many places last week came evidence that Vichyfrance was Hitler's. In Washington, General Robert Jean Claude Roger Odic, until recently commander of the French Air Force in North Africa, joined the Free French forces of General Charles de Gaulle.

French pilots of the North African Air Force deserted to the Free French with their planes. French sailors were reported threatening to mutiny if the Fleet fought against the Allies.

But Vichy had recommissioned the 26,500-ton battleship Dunkerque and made it ready for action. In French North Africa and Dakar, German "technicians" were reported arriving by the score. In Paris, Marcel Deat, ablest spokesman for collaboration, urged open war against General de Gaulle to recover the lost colonies.

As the Marshal's train bore him back to Vichy, his Secretary of State, Jacques Benoist-Mechin, said significantly that the meeting had represented "the marked will of the French Government to engage itself ever more constantly on a path of durable and fruitful European collaboration." As the Marshal stepped down from his car in the heavily guarded Vichy station, he was greeted by a solitary cry of "Vive Petain."

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