Books: Soldier Snafcher

PARIS—UNDERGROUND—Effa Shiber, in collaboration with Anne and Paul Dupre—Scribner ($2.50).

Mrs. Etta Shiber, a former Manhattan housewife, whose chief excitement in life used to be attending concerts, was changed by Dunkirk into a conspirator. She was tracked around Paris, caught and imprisoned for a year and a half by the Gestapo, and finally handed over to the U.S. in exchange for Johanna Hofmann, Nazi spy and hairdresser extraordinary on the S.S. Enropa. Author Shibers crime: helping to smuggle British soldiers out of Occupied France. Paris—Underground* a Book-of-the-Month Club selection for October, is Mrs. Shiber’s exciting story of how she did it. The book is avowedly and completely ghostwritten. Names and places have been changed and shuffled to confuse the Gestapo. Mrs. Shiber valiantly insists that otherwise it all happened that way. But some readers may suspect that Paris—Underground has been somewhat influenced by Alfred Hitchcock.

Incautious Conspirator. After the book had been printed, it was realized that incautious Conspirator Shiber had used the real name of the principal character. So all copies of that version of Paris—Undergroundwere destroyed. In the present version, the principal character is called Kitty Beaurepos. She was the daughter of a London banker, kept a small dressshop, lived in a pleasant apartment near the Arc de Triomphe. When her husband died, Mrs. Shiber shared Kitty’s apartment for three tranquil years. Then the Nazis overran France and the two women tried to flee by automobile.The Nazis overtook them, ordered them back to Paris.

On the way back the two women stopped at an inn. William Gray, an R.A.F. pilot who did not get away at Dunkirk, was hiding there. The proprietor did not want Gray to stay; if he left, the Nazis would capture him. Kitty and Mrs. Shiber secreted him in the luggage compartment of their car, got him into their Paris apartment before they fully realized the risk they had taken, or knew what they would do with Pilot Gray.

Through an official of the Gueules Cassees (literally the “Broken Mouths,” an organization of facially disfigured World War I veterans), the two women got Gray off their hands, but not off their minds. They had outwitted the Gestapo, but there were some 10,000 British soldiers who had been left behind at Dunkirk and were living in the woods. Kitty decided to smuggle as many of them as possible back to Britain. Mrs. Shiber decided to help.

Puzzled Plotters. The first problem was how to establish contact with the British soldiers. The two lady conspirators thought they had found the answer when they read an ad in the missing-persons column of the Nazi-controlled Paris-soir: “Jonathan Burke is looking for his friends and acquaintances. Address Military Hospital, Doullens (Somme).” Kitty insisted, against Mrs. Shiber’s objections, that they rescue him. They did.

This remarkable success emboldened the women to do something which many a reader will doubt, but which Mrs. Shiber insists is literally true. They advertised in Paris-soir: “William Gray (formerly of Dunkirk) is looking for his friends and relatives. Address Cafe Moderne, Rue Rodier, Paris.” There were three replies—one obviously from the Gestapo, one too hazardous to follow up, one from a priest who was sheltering four British soldiers, was in touch with hundreds more. In the next four months Kitty and Mrs. Shiber helped almost 200 British soldiers to get out of Occupied France.

Then one morning in late November 1940, while Kitty was away, the Gestapo knocked at the door, carried Mrs. Shiber off to jail. Later the Nazis bagged Kitty and the priest. Mrs. Shiber was sentenced to three years at hard labor. Kitty and the priest were sentenced to death. But Mrs. Shiber believes that Kitty has not been executed, is in prison in Germany. The priest, according to Mrs. Shiber, was snatched from prison the day before his execution by two British Intelligence officers dressed in Nazi uniforms.

By Underground Author Shiber means, not an underground political movement, but an underground railroad such as fugitive slaves used.