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This webpage reproduces a chapter of Captured by Bessy Myers published by D. Appleton Century Company, New York and London, 1942 the text of which is in the public domain. This text has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know!

On the road in France The Author, Herman Huffer, Mary Darby, and Nigger,º with the Château de Blois unit.

 p. ix  Foreword

This is the story of my adventures as a driver in the Château de Blois Ambulance Corps when it was caught up in the maelstrom in France which followed those fateful days in the late spring of 1940.

With the British Army miraculously rescued from the beaches at Dunkirk, the victorious German armored divisions were being massed for the attack which was to cause the collapse of France and render two million French soldiers prisoners of war.

Of the military events which began when the German forces, advancing so unexpectedly through the Ardennes, smashed the French defences at Sedan and ended with the surrender at Compiègne, I do not attempt to deal. At the time, as a member of a small unit hopelessly engulfed in the French retreat, I knew little of the trend of events so breathlessly watched by the world outside. My unit joined the Sixth French Army at Crouy-sur‑Marne on the 4th of June; the Germans struck at dawn the following day along most of the front, from the coast at Abbeville along the Somme and Aisne Valleys to the Maginot Line at Sedan.

I fell into German hands on the 13th of June at Nogent-sur‑Seine, and then began the incredible hundred days in which I was by turn prisoner of war in a French military hospital, working under German orders, imprisoned in the  p. x Cherche-Midi, the notorious military prison in Paris, and refugee in German-occupied France.

I was extremely lucky; I managed to get back to England. There are many to follow, and for that reason it is impossible now to give any details of some of the route we covered.

Circumstances of the war have forced me to refer to some people by assumed names, but that is all I have changed; the characters themselves, the lives they lead, and the manner in which I met them are accurately described.

My diary begins at the English Convent, Neuilly, the Paris headquarters of the Mechanized Transport Corps to which I was attached. Kruger is one of my companions, Marjorie Juta. I found that she had written a biography of Kruger and asked if she minded my calling her by that name. Since she did not, I so refer to her in my diary.⁠a Mr. Huffer is Herman Huffer, Jr., an American in charge of an ambulance unit. Darby is Mary Darby⁠b who had come over to France with me in June, 1940.

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Thayer's Notes:

a Marjorie Juta in turn reported that when her own and another ambulance escaped from the German army — on p17 our book records this chase, that led to Myers' capture — a third ambulance was left behind, staffed by Myers and Darby: this is the only witness I know of to confirm that Bessy Myers was a real person.

A 1941 portrait of Juta is currently found online at England's National Portrait Gallery; her book, The Pace of the Ox: The Life of Paul Kruger was published by Constable, London, 1937 to mixed reviews. In 1974 Juta published Boundless Privilege: An Autobiography.

b Mary Edytha Louise Darby (Feb. 28, 1901 – Mar. 2, 2002), known by the acronymic "Melda", was the daughter of a sea captain. She joined the Mechanised Transport Corps, volunteering for the Château de Blois Ambulance Corps at the onset of World War II. After escaping France with Myers via Lisbon, she was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government-in‑exile in November 1940. The citation is said to read (as translated): "She showed great courage and dedication in transporting oxygen equipment to first aid posts and casualty clearing stations and the subsequent evacuation of wounded from front-line hospitals."

After the war she married a Dutchman named Nico Kater and lived for a time in South Africa, but soon returned to England. She too wrote an account of her experience, Caught by the Tide, although it seems still to be unpublished today. She died aged 101 in a retirement home in Essex.

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