Girls in Gehenna

CAPTURED--Bessy Myers--Appleton, Century ($2.50).

Captured is the story of two young Englishwomen, ambulance drivers with the French Army, who got caught in the wreckage when France fell. It is a bestseller in England. U.S. readers may find some of its breeziness hard to take, but the book reflects matters greater than itself, contains some sharp observations about the crazy things that happen when a war goes to pieces, instead of going on.

Author Bessy Myers and her cool friend, Mary Darby, were captured in June 1940. They spent the next "incredible hundred days" under the Nazi thumb--in a hospital and in two prisons, in Occupied France. They got loose and back to London. For three weeks, in the notorious Cherche-Midi prison in Paris, they experienced solitary confinement, bedbugs, thoughts about suicide. Their jailmates were in for such crimes as tearing down a Nazi poster; firing a cook (who promptly denounced her mistress to the Nazis); saying sales Bodies (two years); helping Polish suspects escape from Paris (20 years). One night Bessy heard a man being terribly beaten up. He was a German soldier. He had criticized the Army.

Some of the Nazis were pathologically brutal. Quite a few were kindly, intelligent or both. Swarms took snapshots of the girls. One gang tried clumsily to assault them. All were sure that England would go under within a month. A surprising number spoke fluent English. One & all were amazed to find women in military service.

Bessy's talky prose carries her light burdens fairly well, but sometimes leads her into lapses like this startling epitaph:

"Paris--you certainly have fallen."

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