Calais; Une jeunesse tourmentée par deux guerres | Quelques extraits du livre de Robert Detant

Des extraits du livre de Robert Detant un Calaisien dont le père était fabricant de dentelles à Calais, rue du 11 novembre. "Une jeunesse tourmentée par deux guerres" de Robert Detant où il raconte sa jeunesse et la vie à Calais durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale de mai 1940 à mai 1945.... Suite...

- En savoir plus sur Calais ma ville natale, à laquelle je reste attaché viscéralement.

Cannes, Provence hideaways.

Cannes was once a small fishing port with about 500 houses around Mont Chevalier, the area now known as le Suquet. In 1834 Cannes was discovered by Lord Henry Brougham, the British Lord Chancellor. Accompanied by his daughter Eleanor, he was on his way to Nice, still part of Italy but already a fashionable winter resort for the British aristocrats. However he was turned back at the border, which had been closed by the auhtorities due to a cholera outbreak in Nice. As it was already getting late, they stopped for the night in Cannes... Read more...


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Gisele Gregson escaped from Boulogne to England on HMS Venomous on the 22 May 1940 but her husband was interned

George Arthur Gregson (1891 - 1963) was born at Preston, survived the Great War (but his younger brother was killed) and decided to live in France when his father remarried and he was rejected by his stepmother. He settled in Amiens and started a business hiring chauffeur driven cars to church groups visiting the graves of men who died in the war. He met his French wife, Gisèle Dessaint, about 1921 and they had two sons, Maurice (1925) and Dennis (1927). The family moved from Amiens to Boulogne before finally settling at Calais where George Gregson became the agent for the Automobile Association. HIs business prospered. As well as the family home in Calais they had a house in the country at Escalles and George owned a Rolls Royce which he hired out to tourists. Their two sons were born in France but sent to England to receive a British education at the Kings School in Canterbury. The Gregsons were wealthy members of the British community and had a good life. All of this was threatened when Germany's invasion of Poland led to war. For eight months little changed but on the 10 May German forces invaded the Netherlands, bypassed the vaunted Maginot Line and swept on into France encircling and then dividing the British Expeditionary Force. British subjects living in Belgium and northern France were trapped, cut off from the south with the only escape being by sea. If they failed to get away they would be interned as enemy aliens - just as Germans were in England... Read more...

Related story:
- Les anglais de Calais arrêtés en juillet 1940, après l'armistice du 22 juin, et déportés à Tost; le journal de George Arthur Gregson

Gisèle Gregson escaped to England on HMS Venomous but her husband George Arthur Gregson was interned at Tost

George Arthur Gregson (1891 - 1963) was born at Preston, survived the Great War (but his younger brother was killed) and decided to live in France when his father remarried and he was rejected by his stepmother. He settled in Amiens and started a business hiring chauffeur driven cars to church groups visiting the graves of men who died in the war. He met his French wife, Gisèle Dessaint, about 1921 and they had two sons, Maurice (1925) and Dennis (1927).

PG.Wodehouse un célèbre auteur anglais faisait partie des Britanniques arrêtés dans le Nord de la France en 1940

Here is a transcript of a broadcast by the PG.Wodehouse about his and 800 British prisoners' journey from the fortress of Huy in Belgium to Tost in Upper Silesia in 1940; (Fifth Berlin Broadcast [Official transcript made by the German Foreign Office] made after the war:

"I broke off last week with our eight hundred internees setting out for the village of Tost in Upper Silesia. I don't know how well acquainted my listeners are with central European geography, so I will mention that Upper Silesia is right at the end of Germany, and that Tost is right at the end of Upper Silesia - in fact, another yard or two from where we eventually fetched up, and we should have been in Poland.... Read on...

More about PG Wodehouse (wikipedia). 

PG.Wodehouse un britannique résidant du Touquet:
Quand la Seconde Guerre mondiale éclate en 1939 PG Wodehouse reste dans sa villa du Touquet en France, méconnaissant l’ampleur du conflit. En 1940, PG. Wodehouse est arrêté par les Allemands et retenu prisonnier d'abord dans le Fort de Huy en Belgique, puis à Tost en Haute-Silésie, province de l'actuelle Pologne.

PG Wodehouse "life beyond Britain", about his internment at Tost