My father never wanted to talk to me about what he had experienced during the war, with the exception of one Saturday morning, when I was nine years old, when he gave me a version suitable for a child. He told me that he had been a prisoner of war in France and that he had escaped, but he spared me the painful details of the difficult times he had been through. He told me little about who had helped him.
In January 2021, I received an email: “I am writing to you from France because I have the hope that you are the son of George Alleyne Browne who fought in France during the Second World War. If so, know that my grandfather [Albert Schumacher, un membre de la Résistance] and my grandmother helped your father in an escape from a camp. »
The story began 80 years ago, when this Browne, my father, escaped from the bus transporting prisoners of war from the Chamberlan camp to Grenoble, from where they were to be sent to Germany. It was his third escape attempt since being taken prisoner in Dieppe on August 19, 1942. The two previous times he had been captured by the Wehrmacht. This time, he had provoked a fight on the bus and had taken advantage of the confusion to jump out of the vehicle in Grenoble. He had hidden in a ravine near the road. A man saw him and went to get Albert Schumacher. He took my father home, gave him clothes and false papers.
In order to protect himself from spies and informers and to protect his benefactor and his family, my father, who was a captain in the Canadian artillery, announced that he was an airman in the Royal Air Force. This “lie” prevented Albert and his relatives from finding him.
Albert and his family hosted my father for about ten days. They told him where to go, in order to return to England. Albert took him a long way by train towards Spain, then they parted, wishing each other good luck. My father had to leave the train and walk from southeastern France to the Spanish border, where Andorran smugglers guided him past the Pyrenees to the vicinity of Barcelona, from where the British consul repatriated to England.
More than a year later, Albert and his family received to their surprise a postcard from Browne, who was in Marseilles. He said he wanted to see them again, but could not, because he had to return to Italy. After a hard campaign of almost a year (after Dieppe, he had found himself in the middle of another horror story, at Monte Cassin), he was to embark in Marseilles to go with the Canadian army to the Pays -Down. Fearing spies and informers, he had lied once again.
Following the Dieppe massacre and his escape, George Alleyne Browne wrote reports that earned him a decoration. He left the army at the end of the war and began a career in the Canadian diplomatic corps. France decorated Albert Schumacher for his resistance activities. After his time in the army, he returned to work as an engineer in his homeland, Lorraine, which he had left after its annexation by Nazi Germany.
After the war, Albert and his family sought to find out what had become of him. They spent more than 75 years there, before discovering me. Finally, thanks to the Internet, Albert’s daughter and granddaughter were able to find me.
Many Allied prisoners of war transported to Germany did not return. Many perished from cold, hunger and cruelty. If my father had not succeeded in escaping, thanks to the help of Albert and his spouse, he would undoubtedly have been recaptured, would very probably have died in Germany (if he had not been executed before ), would never have married and would never have become a father. In this sense, I owe my life to Albert and his family, who allowed my father, but also me, not only to live, but to live free and in peace for several decades.
Miraculously (and through a lot of effort), Albert’s daughter and granddaughter were able to find me. I owe them a debt of gratitude.