Tangled Web

Newsletter No21 By Elizabeth Harrison

This is the story of three generations of Frenchmen in the Lebé family from St Girons in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Andre Lebé is the curator of the Escape Line museum at St Girons, and has retraced the high level escape line route many times into Spain. Every morning without fail he gets on his bike and heads for the museum.

Also connected to the family are the world famous French Chef, Auguste Escoffier; the escape of Capt BC Bradford of 1Bn Black Watch; the 23 year old Ho Chi Minh (later to become the leader of North Vietnam); The New Zealand High Commission in London; an evader who was the first Patron of ELMS; the Britain-Vietnam Association; and finally a visit to the kitchens of the Ritz Hotel in London.

It all started with two old photographs handed to me at an ELMS Reunion at Eden Camp in April 2009 by André, also an ELMS member, and librarian and archivist of the Museé du Chemin de la Liberté at St Girons. One photograph was of his grandfather who died in London in 1915, and had been the Chef Patissier of the Carlton Hotel in London, owned and run by August Escoffier. The other photograph was of the entire kitchen staff, taken in November 1908, on the roof of the hotel.

André said to me ‘Do with them what you like.’ I was stumped – until I got on to the internet and did some research. Regrettably, it is impossible to go into all of the details of these interconnected stories, however the Ritz, the Savoy, and the Carlton Hotels all had close connections with Escoffier. The problem was, that although both the Savoy and Ritz were still large hotels, the Carlton, situated in London’s Haymarket, had been totally destroyed by German bombs during the blitz. The Escoffier Museum in the South of France (Museé de l’Art Culinaire), informed me (wrongly), that the Carlton was replaced by an apartment block.

Through extensive research involving the New Zealand High Commission, the Britain-Vietnam Association, and the kitchens of the Ritz Hotel in London, the interconnected stories of the Lebé family, Ho Chi Minh, Auguste Escoffier, and the escape lines were revealed. The research uncovered that the 23-year-old Ho Chi Minh had worked in the Carlton Hotel’s kitchen in 1913, likely apprenticed to André Lebé’s grandfather.

The story also connects to Captain BC Bradford of the 1st Battalion Black Watch, who escaped through the Pyrenees with the help of the French Resistance, including members of the Lebé family who were part of the escape line network in St Girons.

A tangled web indeed, full of coincidences!