avenue of spies

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avenue of spies

a true story of

terror, espionage, and

one american family’s

heroic resistance in

nazi-occupied france

Alex Kershaw

C R O W N P U B L I S H E R S

N E W Y O R K


4/18

Copyright © 2015 by Alex Kershaw

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown

Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin

Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kershaw, Alex.

Avenue of spies: a true story of terror, espionage, and one American family’s heroic

resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris / Alex Kershaw.—First edition.

1. Jackson, Sumner Waldron. 2. Jackson, Sumner Waldron—Family. 3. World War,

1939–1945—Underground movements—France—Paris. 4. Spies—France—Paris—

Biography. 5. Americans—France—Paris—Biography. 6. Physicians—France—Paris—

Biography. 7. World War, 1939–1945—France—Paris. 8. Paris (France)—History,

Military—20th century. 9. France—History—German occupation, 1940–1945. I. Title.

D802.F82P37476 2015

940.53'44361092313—dc23 2015016861

ISBN 978-0-8041-4003-4

eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-4004-1

Printed in the United States of America

Maps by David Lindroth Inc.

Jacket design by Elena Giavaldi

Jacket photographs by DPA/ZUMA (top lef); Mondadori/Getty (top right); Roger-Viollet/

Te Image Works (bottom lef); courtesy the author (bottom right)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition


5/18

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Part One

c ity o f d arkne s s

What Nazism, epitomized by the Gestapo, tried to realize

(and almost succeeded in realizing) was the destruction of

man as we know him and as thousands of years have fash-

ioned him. Te Nazi world was an empire of total force, with

no restraints.

J A C Q U E S D E L A R U E , he Gestapo: A History of Horror


10/18

O N E

the fall

A SHELL E XPLODED. Fragments o shrapnel hit a young soldier. He

ell to the ground. Beore long, nurses with East Coast prep school

accents, volunteers at the American Hospital o Paris, helped the

young man into a makeshif operating theater. Te emergency sur-

gery was in the elegant ballroom o a casino in Fontainebleau, orty

miles south o Paris. A tall man with thick dark hair, blue eyes,

bushy brows, large but nimble hands, and a boxer’s ace was soon atthe shattered young man’s side. His name was Dr. Sumner Jackson,

a fify-six-year-old American and the chie surgeon o the American

Hospital o Paris.

Sumner began to examine the young man’s leg and decided there

was only one thing or it. It would have to go. He needed a saw. It

would be no easy operation given the poor light in the casino. A

ew minutes later, the boy lay in agony on a roulette table as Sumner

prepared to remove his leg, careully cutting off the flow o blood

through his arteries. I Sumner made a mistake, the boy could bleed

to death.

Sumner took a scalpel and sliced across the boy’s muscles, reveal-

ing the underlying bone. With an oscillating saw he cut through the

bone and filed down the rough edges beore delicately laying muscle

and skin flaps over the stump. It was painstaking work that took

great care and concentration in the dim light, and Sumner took in-

tense pride in his expertise. A superb combat surgeon, arguably the


11/18

4 AVENUE OF SPIES

finest o his generation, he had vast experience, having spent much

o the last war trying to repair shattered young bodies. In 1916 he

had volunteered or Britain’s Royal Army Medical Corps and had

arrived in Flanders with other Americans who had defied U.S. presi-

dent Woodrow Wilson’s call or neutrality. He was assigned to a sur-

gery near the Somme battlefield, where over ninety percent o those

who “went over the top” and attacked German positions ended up

being killed or wounded.

Sumner had operated on hundreds o young men whose limbs

had been torn asunder by shellfire. wenty-five years later, he wasonce again doing his best to save lives, but there was something par-

ticularly unnerving about the nature o men’s wounds in this new

war. It only took one German 88mm shell to kills dozens o troops

i caught out in the open. Hitler’s modern weapons were designed to

rip humans to small pieces o flying flesh, to turn them to hamburger.

Sumner completed the amputation, ensuring that the boy’s leg

was careully bandaged. Tere was no time to rest. Dozens o othergravely wounded men lay waiting their turn. Sumner was working

sometimes deep into the night—ofen beside a ellow American doc-

tor named Dr. Charles Bove—sawing, cutting, stitching, trying to

save as many soldiers and civilians as they could. Te casino’s cor-

ridors were filled with emergency surgical cases, patients begging or

water or lying in grim silence, resigned to death. Whenever Sumner

straightened his back and took a drink o coffee or water, he could

see yet more who had been laid out on the baccarat tables, waiting

to suffer the saw. Tere were as many urgent cases awaiting Sumner

when he returned to his base, the American Hospital o Paris, reput-

edly the best equipped in Europe, where he had worked since 1925.

He made the journey back and orth in a white ambulance, some-

times driven by an upper-class young American volunteer, through

the working-class outskirts o Paris and then to the leay streets o

upscale Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Many Parisians could not remember such a glorious spring. Te


12/18

THE FALL 5

chestnuts along the Avenue Foch, where Sumner and his wie and

twelve-year-old son lived in a ground-floor apartment at number 11,

were a wonderul green. Breezes carried the sweet scent o purple

lilacs and lilies o the valley. From a wide terrace adjoining his office

on the ourth floor o the hospital, when Sumner was able to take a

break rom surgery, he could see the city’s immense elegance as he

stood or a ew minutes relaxing, usually smoking a cigar or more

ofen a cigarette.

Sumner’s view o Paris, spread out beore him, was abulous, with

the Eiffel ower clear in the distance a ew miles to the southeast. Inthe courtyard below, ambulances pulled up all that May, their bells

ringing, returning rom the ront lines. Te impossible was happen-

ing. France was alling. Anyone who could get out o Paris was doing

so. Many o his American colleagues at the hospital, a cornerstone o

the expatriate community since 1910, and his wealthy neighbors on

Avenue Foch, several o them Jews, had already fled.

Sumner had seen the rise o ascism in Europe, the weakness oEuropean democracies, and the appeasement o Hitler, whom he de-

spised. He had been convinced the previous all, afer war had bro-

ken out, that the United States would join her allies rom the last war

to once again put Germany in her place. Hitler would be stopped.

Sumner could not believe that America would stay neutral and let

Europe all into the abyss once again. But now his worst ears were

being confirmed.

A ortnight earlier Europe had exploded as the Nazis launched a

massive spring offensive in the West. Since May 10, Sumner had read

headlines that grew more ominous by the day. Te Wehrmacht had

stormed with seemingly unstoppable orce through Belgium, Hol-

land, and northern France. Hitler’s armies were less than a hundred

miles rom Paris. Te French were in retreat, the nation losing heart,

it seemed, and the unimaginable happening. Indeed, Sumner knew,

it was no longer a question o whether France would be deeated

but when.


13/18

6 AVENUE OF SPIES

Operating on severely wounded young men consumed all o

Sumner’s waking hours. When he did have time to wipe his brow,

take a long gulp o coffee, and drag on a cigarette as he gazed to the

south rom his terrace, he could not help but think about his fify-

two-year-old wie and their son, Phillip, at home on Avenue Foch, a

couple o miles rom the Eiffel ower.

Afer twenty-one years o marriage, Sumner was still utterly de-

voted to Swiss-born Charlotte Sylvie Barrelet de Ricou, whom Sum-

ner had always called oquette. She was petite with sandy brown

hair and the lean physique o a keen tennis player. In her youth, shesometimes boasted, she had beaten the best French tennis player o

the time, Suzanne Lenglen, who had won thirty-one championship

titles. Afer the last war, Sumner had taken her back to New England,

but she was so dreadully unhappy, missing Paris and her amily so

much that she ell ill. “It’s me or America,” she finally demanded.

Sumner chose her, abandoning a good job in a Philadelphia hospital

and returning to Paris, where he was orced to spend years studyingFrench and taking endless exams in order to practice medicine in

France, much to his bitter rustration. He was in act compelled to

repeat six o his seven years o medical school. Finally, at age thirty-

five, he had been able to earn a living as a doctor once more.

oquette had been more than worth the sacrifice. Te youngest

o six children whose ather was a successul Swiss lawyer, she had a

remarkably powerul spirit. Sumner also greatly admired her cour-

age and stamina. She had won a Red Cross award or our years o

service in bloody surgeries in World War I and shared his belie that

one should give back, not just take, in a civilized society. He had first

met her when she was a eisty twenty-eight-year-old nurse working

at his side in a hospital on the Rue Piccini in Paris in 1916. “Te first

time I kissed your mother,” Sumner jokingly told his son, “was in a

linen closet at the Rue Piccini. . . . It was a very long kiss.”

oquette was witty, spoke flawless English, and quickly discov-

ered that the equally pithy Sumner also loved to swim, sail, and play


14/18

THE FALL 7

tennis. Soon, thirty-one-year-old Sumner, whom she called Jack, was

seriously wooing her, ofen visiting her amily home in Enghien-les-

Bains, an upscale suburb o Paris. Neither oquette nor her amily

needed any persuading, and the couple was married at the amily

home in Enghien in November 1917. Over a decade later, their son,

Phillip, known to all as Pete, was born on January 10, 1928, in the

American Hospital. Phillip’s birth when oquette was thirty-nine,

afer she had all but given up hope o conceiving, prompted a rau-

cous party with several bottles o Bollinger 1921 champagne being

drunk to celebrate the new arrival.Sumner and oquette had since doted on their only child, and

he had grown up very much aware that his parents had a great love

or each other. oquette did all she could to make Sumner happy,

determined he would never regret his decision to orsake his amily

(he was close to his brother, Daniel, and sister, Freda) and a lie in

America or one in France. Yet on the outbreak o the Second World

War, the previous September, Sumner and oquette had once againbeen orced to decide whether they should stay in Europe or leave.

Sumner had thought it best they go to America or Phillip’s saety.

But oquette had insisted on staying. Te idea o living in the United

States again filled her with almost as much dread as the approaching

Germans.

Eight months later, oquette was just as determined to stay in

Paris, close to her amily. And Sumner still aced an agonizing

choice. Should he continue to do as his wie wanted? Or should he

ignore her wishes and take his amily back to America while there

was still time to escape?

FLAME S JUMPE D into the sky. Near Amiens in northern France,

an ambulance driver tried to make his way past burning buildings,

avoiding downed telephone wires, rotting horse carcasses, and bomb

craters, pitiul evidence o the immense erocity o Hitler’s Blitzkrieg.


15/18

8 AVENUE OF SPIES

It was early on May 18, 1940, when a well-spoken Princeton gradu-

ate, thirty-two-year-old Donald Coster, looked up rom the ambu-

lance and saw German planes, wave afer wave o them. Tere were

the whistles and screams o bombs alling. Stuka dive-bombers with

inverted gull wings attacked, dropping five-hundred-pound bombs,

leaving behind a blanket o acrid, sickening umes. Coster made it to

a hospital in Châteaudun just as the bombing became most intense.

erribly araid, the volunteer ambulance driver took shelter in the

hospital’s basement.

Afer about an hour, the sound o bombing ended. Tere was atense silence. Coster knew the Germans were close by, approaching

Amiens itsel, one hundred and fify miles north o Paris. Like mil-

lions o French, Coster had tried to escape their lightning advance.

Tat was why he was now cowering in a cellar beside several dozen

doctors, nurses, and wounded soldiers. Te bombing began again.

Tis time the explosions were much closer. Coster elt them like

“punches” against his chest. It was quiet once more. He could hearhis heart beating ast and then came the sound o heavy jackboots on

cobblestones. For several minutes Coster waited, expecting grenades

to be thrown down into their shelter. He stood up and climbed the

steps leading out o the cellar.

Daylight blinded Coster as he lef the shelter and walked into a

courtyard. For the first time he caught sight o a German soldier.

Te storm trooper was aiming at a line o French prisoners backed

against a wall. Tey were civilians. Te German looked as i he was

going to finish them off. Coster waved his identification card at the

German, who instantly turned his gun on him and was about to pull

the trigger when someone called out in German, begging the soldier

to spare Coster and take him to his commander instead.

Coster and some o his ellow ambulance men, under guard,

walked fify yards or so until they reached a main junction on the

road to Amiens. Tere was a roaring o engines, a clanking o tank

tracks. A Panzer column was moving into the city—the tip o the


16/18

THE FALL 9

Nazi spear thrusting toward Paris. Tere had been no more mobile

and powerul orce in the history o war, and Coster looked on in

awe. Te column seemed to stretch orever and moved so ast, the

tanks thundering by at orty miles an hour, bristling with heavy

weapons, the eight-oot-high steel behemoths surely unstoppable.

Armored cars ollowed, pulling camouflaged antiaircraf guns, their

20mm barrels pointing skyward. One tank rolled toward a bar-

ricade arther down the road and smashed through, making light

work o heavy logs. “Nothing invented by man, you elt with a shock

o despair,” recalled Coster, “could possibly withstand this inhumanmonster which had already flattened hal o Europe.”

A German officer ordered Coster to help at a nearby hospital and

bring in wounded rom the battlefield. In a field o high grass were

many English dead rotting in the sun, their aces purple and black.

Tere were a ew men whose wounds were already gangrenous, and

they gritted their teeth as they called or help rom where they lay

amid dozens o dead cows with huge bloated stomachs. Te stenchwas nauseating. Tree hundred British soldiers had been riddled

with bullets rom the Panzers’ machine guns. Fewer than thirty had

survived.

A German approached as Coster helped the wounded. He thought

Coster was a British soldier, mistaking his uniorm, and snatched his

gloves away. Coster stupidly tried to grab them back and the German

whipped out his pistol and aimed it at his stomach. Coster pointed

to the band on his arm, showing the symbol or the American Field

Service, a volunteer ambulance unit.

“ Amerikanisch,” said Coster.

o Coster’s surprise, the German officer stood to attention, sa-

luted Coster, shook his hand, and then lef without another word.

Other German soldiers nearby talked with Coster. Tey regarded

Americans with bemused contempt, especially President Roosevelt,

a vacillating windbag compared to their glorious, decisive Führer.

One o them said: “We never see any o you on our side.”


17/18

10 AVENUE OF SPIES

Tere was more good news rom the ront—or the Germans.

Afer advancing through southern Belgium, the Germans had

crossed the Meuse River and pierced the French line at Sedan. Te

Allies had been orced to retreat toward the port o Dunkirk. Disas-

ter loomed. Nothing, it seemed, could stop the Nazi juggernaut as it

barreled toward Paris.


18/18
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