I FLEW to France from London last Wednesday and arrived in Paris by train at 4am on Thursday. Little did I realise that this was to be the last day before the German occupation.
Many thousands of people with bundles and bags were on the streets begging to be let into the station. The police were holding them back, telling them that no more trains were leaving Paris.
Paris was a tragic sight. The sun streamed through the chestnut trees, but gone were the laughing crowds along the boulevards, the rich smell of tobacco, and there were no splashing fountains and noisy cabs. Only a sweep of lonely deserted streets.
We passed cars creaking under the weight of mattresses, chairs and bicycles, and hastening down the boulevards on their way out of the city. Every now and then we passed family groups who were starting out their long trek on foot. One woman was wheeling along an invalid husband. When we asked them where they were going they said they didn't know. They only wanted to get out "before the Boches come".
The loneliness and the quiet of Paris was almost beyond words. Although there were reports that the Germans were only 20 miles away, there was no sound of gunfire - only an incredible silence. I counted only four cars on the Champs-Elysées, and at the Arc de Triomphe, where usually crowds are gathered.
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We watched the evacuation of the Ecole Militaire and drove past Les Invalides, in front of which 500 taxicabs were waiting to collect government documents. In the poorer sections of the city there were more people; they evidently had not the means to leave, and must make the best of it.
Several times when we were crossing the main squares we saw groups of soldiers, their faces black with dust and full marching kit on their backs, limping wearily along; evidently they were back from the front, but there was nobody to cheer them.
The faces of the people on the streets showed no sign of resignation, only a deep and bitter hatred to think that soon German troops would be racing through the streets of their beloved city. Some of them seemed stunned by the thought, as though they had not yet taken in what it meant. Others seemed ready to accept it with loathing and fight against it until the day when Paris would once again be free.
The concierge of our office said his father had lived through the invasion of 1870; he had lived through 1914 and now his family would have to live through 1940. "It will not last," he said, "they have come before and they have left before."
Later I was lucky enough to run into an English journalist who had just come back from the Franco-Italian frontier. He had a car and petrol, so we started for Tours, arriving exactly 24 hours later.
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As we drove down the banks of the Seine I thought I had never seen Paris looking more beautiful. For 10 hours we averaged 4mph. The exodus had to be seen to be believed - an unbroken flow of human beings bicycling, riding and trudging along the roads.
We passed dozens of overloaded cars that had broken down; we passed people who had run out of petrol, weeping in despair; old people lying by the roadside too tired to move further. The villages were tied up for hours with traffic jams and the flow of people cleaned the shops out of food.
At last we turned off the main roads and into the army zone, where the troops appeared to be in high spirits. At one point a French tank unit came roaring down the road. Two motorcyclists with a machinegun attached to the sidecar asked if we had any cigarettes. When we gave them a packet they were so pleased they escorted us through the convoy, and for half an hour we went racing along between two 70-ton tanks.
We passed truckloads of RAF boys shouting and singing, and twice British fighters roared over our heads to attack the German bombers.
In one village we found a company of British soldiers. The officers invited us into the cookhouse for a cup of tea, and questioned us about England. They had been in France for four months. When we left they laughingly said: "See you in Cologne next Christmas."
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German troops entered Paris on June 14 and accepted the surrender of France on June 22.
American-born Virginia Cowles, who later married the politician and journalist Aidan Crawley, was 29 when she wrote this. She died in a car crash in France in 1983 aged 73.