En route with the Troups to Bayonne

Press, 2 September 1986, Page 22

En route with the Troups to Bayonne

A bomb blast recently pushed the little French town of Bayonne into the world’s headlines. MARY TROUP BAKER, of Christchurch, recalls making an unscheduled visit to the town in the 1960’s after her late husband, a well-known Christchurch teacher and writer, Gordon Troup, had a minor run-in with the law.

The French town of Bayonne, in the Low Pyrenees, has come into the news lately because of a bomb attack on a court building,, and the loss of several French lives. Since then some Basque Separatists suspected of terrorism have been deported back to Spain. But Bayonne has been weathering more serious international incidents for most of its seventeen centuries.

If the name of this town seems vaguely familiar to readers who remember old-style military rifles, then yes, Bayonne is where the bayonets came from. Tradition and circumstantial evidence show that the bayonet was developed there early in the seventeenth century, and derived its name from the place of its origin and probable first use. The new weapon gradually spread through Europe and supplanted the pike (eventually reaching even New Zealand). Its original form — a foot-long straight-edged blade and a tapering wooden handle also of one foot — was later shortened.

The first time I realised the location of Bayonne was during a ski-ing trip to the High Pyrenees, when I saw the name on a signpost pointing along a side road. I made a mental note of it (having learned about its bayonets at school in New Zealand); but I had no inkling that in a few months time I would make a dramatic, almost triumphal entry into that town. One spring morning our family car, a second-hand Simca, drove importantly into Bayonne with a motor-cycle escort fore and aft. But it was not an official welcome to distinguish visitors — merely the result of a slight indiscretion in relation to traffic regulations, a few kilometres outside the town.

My late husband, our four children and I had spent the Easter holidays in Spain, but were now driving , from San Sebastian back to our temporary home

in south-west France, further up the Bay of Biscay. On a broad highway climbing a hill, our progress was badly impeded by a heavy vehicle driving very slowly ahead. There being plenty of space and no oncoming traffic, my husband thought it safe to overtake, but in so doing he ran two wheels slightly over a yellow centre line — and was seen by two patrol officers who materialised from nowhere. They took us in tow forthwith — or rather, they took post before and behind us, and set a brisk pace for the police headquarters in Bayonne.

As the miscreant was escorted into this dignified building, the rest of us were turned loose, so to speak, to explore the town on foot. We found a fairly typical provincial centre, with the charm of some ancient edifices made more delightful by sunshine and spring foliage on the trees. The town can boast a Gothic cathedral dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries; two very old chateaux; and a citadel designed by the great seven-teenth-century master of fortification, Marshal Vauban.

The place began in the third century as a Roman military post and port, named Lapurdun, and its present name (probably Basque) appeared first in the twelfth century. In the early middle ages it belonged to the dukes of Aquitaine, but 1154 it passed to the kings of England. In 1451 it vigorously opposed the French, but they eventually reoccupied it. In 1523 it held firm against a Spanish army,

and in the Peninsula War of the Duke of Wellington, after a severe siege in 1814, Bayonne was again occupied by the English. Much blood was shed then around this garrison town, and there was great bitterness between the Spanish soldiers (in the pay of the English) and the French. In the light of recent events, it is evident that rancour persists. Two rivers, the Adour and the Nive, divide Bayonne into three nearly equal parts, with a railway station in the most modern third. The confluence of the rivers is about five kilometres from the coast of the Gulf of Gascony, better known for the resort of Biarritz. The river-port brings mixed commerce, more important than the local industries of leather and chocolate. We did not attempt to explore very far; but we did look for some comfortstations. Leaving the three boys to their own researches (males are always so much better provided for than females), my young daughter and I went hopefully into a homely small cafe with living-quarters above. Having established ourselves as bona fide customers by ordering soft drinks, I asked the somewhat slatternly woman in charge if we might use the conveniences. She seemed reluctant to oblige, but led us through a quaint old kitchen, where my eye was caught by a grubby scalloped pelmet on a high mantelpiece, made of shiny Americancloth from away back. Ushering us up a pokey stairway, Madame quizzed us as to our intentions. If we had had a “large necessity” she would have made us climb higher; but as our necessity was only small, we were permitted to use a cabinet half-way up. My heart sank; would this be one of those primitive

holes in the floor? No, there was a toilet bowl of sorts, but scarcely space to manoeuvre between it and the door, which was disinclined to shut and fasten — so we stood guard for each other. Luckily no other patrons of the cafe arrived to attend to their own necessities. Meanwhile, back at the police station, the head of the family was being interrogated. When they found that he was a teacher on his way back to his position at a boys’ high school, and that the re-entry after the Easter holidays was to occur next day, the officials decided to give him only a caution for his infringement of the road code. The were quite concerned that he should not fail in his duty to the school and its pupils. (My husband had found on other occasions, too, that the French police had a more respectful attitude to members of the teaching profession than did their counterparts at home!) But there was the little matter of his New Zealand driver’s licence. Why did he not have an international one? My husband informed his interrogators that he had been assured he would not need one; and that the authorities at La Rochelle (in our department of Charente Maritime) had told him they would be quite satisfied for him to use his New Zealand licence during our stay of less than a year in France. So the officials at Bayonne put through a telephone call to La Rochelle to verify the statement of this elderly eccentric New Zealander. Finding that it was true, they jovially gave him their blessing and sent him on his way, back to school. After the six of us were gathered in the car, and were looking for a route to drive out of town, I expressed a sudden idea. Shouldn’t we go back to the police station and take a photo of our disgraced but reinstated hero standing in front of the entrance? It would be a historic picture for our collection. Monsieur Troup’s reply was quite definite: he would do nothing of the sort. Having made an honourable escape from a difficult situation, he had no wish to push his luck any further.

Perhaps he had in mind the old association between Bayonne and bayonets: