Coincidences

(that happened during my life)

by Babs Dahlman

This is a series of short storied written by my Mom, Babs Dahlman.  She had an English Literature Degree from the University of London, and I have edited her writing only very lightly!!!!

I began thinking several months ago of so many coincidences that have happened in my life and thought I would write them down.  They are not in chronological order, however.

The Cabby

Perhaps I could begin with one that happened maybe forty-five years ago.  I was in New York with Don.  He was attending a convention and I was at one of the museums, and found myself late at getting back to the hotel. I hailed a taxi and said, “The Swiss Hotel”.  The driver looked back at me and said, “I know you”.  I said, “I do not know you”, but he said again, “I know you”.  

I was getting a little agitated but went ahead and asked him how he knew me.  He said, “I was a military policeman during World War II and at the First Peace settlement in Germany which General Montgomery signed at the little Red School House.  I escorted you to a seat there.  General Bradley knew you were in the vicinity and arranged it.  Is this not true?”  Of course, it was true, and I was there.  When he stopped at the Swiss Hotel he jumped out of the cab and would not take the fare.  He said, “It is a real pleasure knowing you Ma’am”.

Finnish Furniture

I was in San Francisco, again on a business trip with Don.  How lucky I was to have all those trips!  It was a dreary morning, and I was looking for something adventurous to do.  I had always wanted to sail on San Francisco Bay, so I made my way down to Fisherman’s Wharf where I knew you could sail with a tourist boat.  However, when I got there the captain said it was a little rough that day and no passengers.  I was very disappointed.

As I turned away, a young man came up and said, “I will charter the whole boat and this lady can come along.”  The captain consented and I was thrilled.  He outfitted us with life vests, and  off we sailed into a fairly rough sea!  We sailed for about four hours.  The young man was from Finland and a delightful companion.  We talked of politics and art and had a great time.  He was on a business trip – in the furniture business.  When we got back to the port, he offered to take me for lunch, but I said “No thanks” and then said “Ships that pass in the night” or some such phrase.  

I was pretty wet and decided to go into a restaurant, clean up and have a late lunch.  I did so and ate a delicious meal.  When my bill came, the waiter said a foreign gentleman came in and left twenty-five dollars for my lunch!  When I got back to the hotel for the cocktail party, everybody asked, “Where have you been?”  I’ve been sailing on San Francisco Bay,” said I.

A year or so later, again in New York, I was hailing a cab when a voice said, “The English lady who sailed with me on San Francisco Bay.”  It was my man from Finland.  We shared a cab, he to the airport, me to the hotel.  He paid the fare!

Across the Back Garden

Two years ago I was sitting on the beach at Vero Beach, where we spend our winters, when I saw a couple strolling along the water’s edge.  She was holding a little bowl and collecting something from the sea.  I was intrigued and asked her what she was collecting.  She answered it was bait for her husband’s fishing trip.  We started talking and she said, “Oh, you are English”.  I said “Yes, it is my birthday and I had a card from the Queen.”  

She threw her arms around me.  I asked her where she lived in England and she told me, but then said she used to live in Wallington, Surrey.  “Well,” said I, “so did I.  Where did you live?”  She said, “Hawthorne Road.”  I lived on the next road, Brambeedown Road.  On comparing numbers ,we shared back gardens.  How extraordinary we should meet four thousand miles away in a different country.  We have become good friends in our golden age.

John Hill

This in my favorite, though I am not sure that Don likes it so much.  When I was nine years old, my sister Eileen was dating a young man named John Hill.  He  was very handsome.  I was in love with him myself and went to Woolworth’s and bought a ring and told everybody one day I was going to marry John Hill.  I even had a photograph made and gave it to him.  Kid stuff, of course.  He was wonderful; didn’t laugh or make fun of me.  Well, he and my sister parted, and she married someone else.

John was well liked by our family and kept in touch and visited us.  He and I had a correspondence through the years.  John came to London in 1943 – the same year I met Don and fell madly in love with him.  Don, I mean.  John, at that time, asked me to marry him.  The answer was no because I loved Don.  He left and later married an Englishwoman and they went to live in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Africa.  I kept up a casual correspondence with him over the years and we saw him and his wife a couple of times.

We decided for my seventy-fifth birthday to take everyone to England – children, grandchildren, etc.  I wrote to John and Sue and told them we would like to meet them and they would get to see our family.  I gave them some idea of our itinerary, but I did not get a reply.

We all went to England, and my niece and nephew gave a wonderful party for me the second day we arrived.  Unfortunately, during the party I fell down some stone steps and splintered my pelvis in three places.  I was in a wheel chair for the rest of the trip.  We rented three houses in various parts of England – Canterbury, Oxford and Cornwall.  The thought of seeing John Hill had gone from my mind.

My daughter Terry was driving from Oxford to Cornwall.  We stopped to pick up my sister-in-law in Exeter Down.  We packed a picnic, which we frequently did.  On our way to Cornwall we stopped to eat our picnic.  It was at a pit stop, and we decided to go on.  Terry said, “Mummy, look for a nice shady place as we drive on.”  I  saw a sign saying to miles to Lake _______.  Should we do that?  We decided yes.

We arrived at the lake and they were all helping out of the car when a strong arm came around me.  I looked up and it was John!  “What are you doing here?” I said.  He said “I wrote you to meet me here at one o’clock.”  It was one o’clock.  We had a great time sharing our picnic.  He met some of our children, and we said goodbye.  He died the following year.

When we got back to Cincinnati and collected our mail, there was the letter from John which said to meet him that day in that place at that time.  What an extraordinary coincidence.

From the War

Soon after I was released from the Officials Secrets Act, I was having a luncheon with an English friend in Clifton, and the conversation got around to World War II.  I told her about my involvement with Special Operations in Europe and detailed some of my missions in France.  Some weeks later she called and invited me to a dinner party she was giving, and mentioned she had also invited someone she would like me to meet.  I accepted the invitation.

It was quite a large affair, and soon after we arrived, she came over with a lady, a French lady who was a professor at the University of Cincinnati.  She was about fifteen or twenty years younger than I, and to my amazement, she threw her arms around me.  I was slightly alarmed.  She said “You are Virginia, aren’t you?”  I was shocked for a moment because my code name in Special Operations was Virginia. 

My friend evidently told her about me and she remembered when she was about five, her parents, who were part of the Underground, would go out to meet a Lysander (the plane that brought the spies into Occupied France) and she said they always talked about the young British spy called Virginia.  They were both caught and shot by the Germans. 

Whoever thought that a little French girl would meet the English spy Virginia in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

Siblings

My brother Leslie was thirteen years older than I and there were three siblings between us.  But Leslie and I were always very close to each other.  When I went to finishing school in Liege, Belgium, he and his wife lived in Brussels and I spent most of my weekends with them.  My brother was extremely talented – spoke eleven languages fluently and was also a great athlete.

When the War broke out in 1939, he sent his wife and children back to England but stayed as the British Army was driven back into the sea at Dunkirk.  The British Government asked him to evacuate all the British citizens out of Brussels to Dunkirk, where, hopefully, there would be a boat to take them across the Channel.

Before he did this, he quickly organized an escape route across Europe for British and (eventually) American pilots who were shot down.  He and his fellow countrymen had a perilous journey to the coast and got on the last boat to England.

Meanwhile, I was doing my bit for my country in Special Operations.  I was called one day for a mission and my briefing was at Tempsford where the Lysanders were.  To my complete surprise, my brother Leslie walked in to do the briefing.  I had no idea he was associated with S.O.E., and he had no idea I was involved.  He was more than a little perturbed that he might be sending his favorite little sister to her death, but that was what war was all about.  How strange, and what a coincidence that was.

My brother was given the Order of King Leopold after the War, and also made a Commander of the British Empire by King George VI.  Unfortunately, he was killed in his own aero plane fifteen years after the War.

Sylvia Beach

When I was at the University of London studying History and English and Literature, I was fascinated by reading of a woman who owned a bookshop in Paris and who had published James Joyce’s Ulysses when nobody else would publish it.

Her name was Sylvia Beach and her bookshop was The Shakespeare Bookshop.  She held poetry readings and her companions were famous writers from all over the world who converged on Paris at that time.  That included James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Alice B. Toklas, etc.  I imagined her to be beautiful, sophisticated and elegant.  I longed to meet her and talk to her.

During the War on one of my missions my assignment was Paris, which was then occupied by the Germans.  I was dropped by Lysander in a small place in a field in the middle of nowhere, I thought.  It was about thirty miles outside of Paris.  I was met by a French agent who drove me into Paris in his Citroen and left me at his aunt’s apartment.  She was also a French agent.

The apartment was just below the Sacre Coeur.  I was led to the attic where I was to spend the night.  It was a sweet little room overlooking the roofs of Paris.  As I stood at the window in my cotton panties and cotton bra, I thought how strange to see Paris this way.  I was a British spy, and in the movies the spies were always in black satin nightgowns with a string of pearls and diamond bracelets and a handsome man to go to bed with, and all I had was cold, damp sheets to step into.  Oh, well.

I noticed an envelope on the bedside table and, as I opened it, in code I found the name of my contact;  Sylvia Beach.  I could hardly believe my eyes.  What a way to meet her.

The next morning I got up and made my way to the Shakespeare Bookshop, stopping to say a prayer at the Notre Dame Cathedral.  As I was saying my rosary, a young German officer came and sat beside me.  I thought, “I am going to be caught” and prayed to the Holy Mother in my hour of need.  The German officer turned and smiled at me and took his rosary out. 

I left soon after and made my way to the bookshop.  I have related this story in a previous paper  — sorry to bore you.  I went in – rather musty and dark – and there she stood.  I was disappointed.  She looked old and frumpy and badly dressed.  Then I looked into her blue, blue eyes and knew she had seen the world and had revolutionized the book world by publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses. I introduced myself and told her who I was and how much I had wanted to meet her.  She was very patient and kind.  Finally, we planned the mission and I left. 

I returned to London the next day and went  to my fake office at the Ministry of Health.  Mr. Baker looked at me and said, “Been out with a Yank all night?”  Little did he know that I had been on a mission to an occupied country and my dream had come true.  I had met Sylvia Beach.  Such a coincidence.  (here is the full  Sylvia Beach Story).

Stolen Art

On one of my missions for S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive) in Paris, I again met with Sylvia Beach.  Our assignment was to dynamite a train outside of Paris to delay a troop train with German troops going to the front.  We heard that it was not going to be a troop train, but was going to be full of art on its way to General Goering’s underground museum in Dresden.  This information was given to us on good authority by the Maquis.  We could not contact London, so finally decided to about the operation, save the art and let the train go through.

Some years after the War was over, Don was asked to go to Le Mans, France, to represent Dayton and to honor the Wright Brothers who had their first (European) flight there.  It was a very exciting trip, starting in Paris where the US Ambassador was to have a cocktail party for us.  On the way to the party, we were caught in a traffic jam in the same tunnel where later Princess Diane had that awful accident.  Anyway, by the time we arrived at the party, people were leaving.

The next morning we took the train to Le Mans accompanied by the ambassadorial staff, NBC news and camera men.  We were met by the Prefect (Governor of the Province) and he and his entourage led us through the old city where a reception was given.  Then onto the Le Mans car race track where we were driven at 185 mph around the track.  It was very exciting.  Then there was a fly-by for us – we felt very important.

There was another reception and then Don proceeded to lay wreaths and the various places and made speeches lauding the French and the Wright Brothers.  He did a super job.  I was so proud of him.

Then the Governor took us back to his chateau where we enjoyed the most wonderful lunch.  After lunch the Governor said he had an important announcement to make. He said that the art stolen from Paris by General Goering had been returned – that very day.  My heart turned over!  I was still under the Official Secrets Act so could not say a word, but what a coincidence that I should be there when the art was returned.  How fortunate we aborted the plan to dynamite the tracks and let the train go on and save the art.