MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
As an avid reader of biographies from World War 2, I was intrigued by your recent article (“The last road”, Accidental Tourist, June 16). I was only disappointed that it was so short. I am very curious about how Louise Morgan survived the occupation of France. Was it because she lived in a remote area or was it because of her relationship with the Roosevelts? In any case, I loved the story and the accompanying image. And to think the comtesse (her daughter) could recall that day — amazing! Thank you. — Mrs J Bonhomme
Thank you for your kind words, they really mean a lot to me. As it happens, I had been meaning to contact Louise Morgan’s son Richard for some time, firstly to let him know that my mother — WJ Makin’s daughter — had died in January and secondly to arrange a follow-up visit to ask some of the questions we hadn’t 14 years ago.
My grandfather, Makin, was a war correspondent who was on his way to meet Louise Morgan on August 18 1944 when he and his party drove into an ambush near the village of Beaumont-lesAutels in Normandy.
I also wanted to find out how his mother had survived the German occupation of France and managed to keep her chateau. This week, I searched on Google for a phone number for him only to discover that he died last Friday.
He was 90, so he’d had a good innings. Yet the news was upsetting, not least of all because another first-hand link to my family’s history is now lost. It is a reminder of the famous saying that when an old person dies, it’s the same as a library burning down.
As to why Louise Morgan was left alone in her chateau, my various Internet searches have revealed very little. The area is certainly remote, as remote as it gets in this part of France.
Although she was a cousin of the Roosevelts, she was also French and it seems likely that the German occupiers had been instructed to leave her and her daughter, Comtesse Dulong de Rosnay, in peace (stranger things have happened in war, to be sure). Richard, her son, was at boarding school in the US and he remembered clearly that his mother had been expecting a visit from some journalists and also that they had never arrived.
There was, however, another odd moment. When my mother and I arrived, Richard Morgan, the comtesse and the housekeeper were about to have lunch. The comtesse was in her
90s, in a wheelchair and quite frail and she took no part in the conversation — until my mother asked about the ambush.
It was as if a light dawned in her eyes as she told us where the ambush had happened. And then she fell silent again. Perhaps she had been listening all along, perhaps the words had triggered a deep memory.
There was no chance to ask any more — Richard Morgan, concerned about his sister, was anxious that we should leave.
There were other unexplained things about that day in 1944.
Two of my grandfather’s companions were journalists. One, Gault McGowan, the New York Sun’s senior war correspondent, was taken prisoner in the ambush — it was he who referred to the Germans strapping my grandfather “spreadeagled” on the front of one tank and driving some 80km to the nearest field hospital. McGowan never saw him again.
The other reporter was Paul Holt of the Daily Express. Evidence suggests he tracked WJ down to the American field hospital in Chartres — where, the story goes, he cracked a joke and turned over and died. Of Holt himself, however, there is no trace — The Daily Express had no record of him and the trail had gone cold.
Meanwhile, their guide — a Frenchman named Robert — had apparently owned a cinema in Beaumont-les-Autels. But there was no record of him either. So many French lives were swallowed in the war that it’s possible that Monsieur Robert was just another unremarked and forgotten victim.
To underscore this point, I quote from the last letter my grandfather wrote to my mother: “Most of the villages here are just heaps of broken stones and earth. I went to the baker’s shop where yesterday I bought a small loaf of bread. I was served by two little girls, French girls, one about Judith’s age [my mother’s sister] and the other about yours ... But when I reached the shop today it was no longer there. A German shell had hit it and smashed it to pieces. I don’t know what happened to the two little girls but I fear the worst.” We can help with your destination dilemmas, visa puzzles and itinerary ideas. E-mail us on
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