Passage to Marseille

Manning, a British war correspondent, has been granted access to tell the story of the Free French Air Squadron, one of the most successful squadrons in the quest to liberate France from the Nazis, it which happens to be based in a top secret location in the English countryside. While admiring the facility in its entirety, he seems more interested in the look of determination of one of the airmen who he seems to recognize from somewhere. Captain Freycinet, the liaison officer between the squadron and the RAF, begins to tell an off the record story concerning that airman, he revealing why it has to be off the record near the end of the story. At the outbreak of the war, Freycinet was ordered back to France from New Caledonia, he one of a few military men crossing east in the Atlantic en route to Marseille aboard the tramp steamer, Ville de Nancy, they who were seen among the ranks of the ship's officers. During the crossing in the middle of the ocean, they rescued five men near death in a canoe. While the men tell one story, most of the officers, including Freycinet, believed they were escapee convicts from Devil's Island. The five eventually take Freycinet into their confidence in that they are indeed Devil Island escapees, their mission in escaping, as patriotic Frenchmen, to fight for France in the war. The five are: Petit, a farmer, who killed and maimed some officers in trying to protect his land; former mechanic and race car driver Garou, also convicted for murder in an act of passion; safe-cracker Marius; WWI deserter Renault, whose cowardice he recognized as being wrong and was eventually arrested when he tried to enlist in the French Foreign Legion; and the de facto leader Jean Matrac, a former newspaper editor who was framed for murder in 1938 in the authorities wanting to punish him in his anti-Munich Agreement stance. The five and Freycinet would have a tenuous voyage as there were some on board who were sympathetic of the Nazi takeover of France in seeing it as the new world order and thus against what the six saw as their mission i.e. what was best for France.