Jeune Chambre Economique de Monaco

Second Business Happy Hour of the year

BAM members were the special guests at the JCI Happy Hour on the 2nd of June at Le Zest. The evening ran from 6.30-8.30 pm and over a hundred members of BAM and JCI attended.

 This year the JCI is actively forging links with other associations in the Principality and BAM were chosen as a Representative of the Anglophone community. President of the JCI, Kevin Hin, made the welcome address and Vice President of BAM, Vanessa Ilsley gave a short introduction to BAM and its activities in Monaco.

During the evening new links were forged  between the two associations and  will be further developed through the BAM  sponsored English debating competition announced in the last BAM News.

Mr Churchill says “Peace will be ratified in Berlin to-day” “VICTORY!” screamed the headlines. Mr Churchill added “Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King!”

Sixty five years have passed since that eventful day of the 8th May 1945 yet today to many in Monaco the quiet raw courage that contributed to that freedom is unknown. Few who gaze at the Bugatti, coloured in green which became known as British
Racing green, implanted for most of the year on the roundabout at St Devote, and read the Plaque recording the winner of the Inaugural Monaco Grand Prix William Grover-Williams which noting too his death in 1945, realise that Grover-Williams, who had lived in Monaco for part of his lifetime, died sometime in February or March 1945 “known only to God”.

Grover-Williams was recruited into the Special Operations Executive created by Mr Churchill to “set Europe ablaze” After parachuting and setting up a successful operations unit near Paris with another Grand Prix racer Robert Benoist, both fell foul of the Gestapo. His chequered flag fell when after months of captivity in Sachenhausen Concentration Camp outside Berlin he was executed in the few months before that day of “Victory”!

A few British people hung out in Monaco too even after Mussolini declared war on France and bombarded Menton. “Of those a few in turn remembered where their loyalty and indeed their duty lay” records Professor MRD Foot. Two elderly ladies, Grace and her sister Suzie, Scottish by birth, having the surname “which alone should have made any Axis security officer jump” of ‘Trenchard’ had at one time lived in the Channel Islands.

Both well respected the sisters ran a small Tea shop which did some business but whose customers included some two dozen escaped and evading British and Canadian service men whom they “baby sat” until their “parcels” could be passed along the line, mostly the “PAT” line. Their rescue service lasted until this famous line of escape was broken up by the Nazi and Monaco itself became filled with senior French and German policemen when it all became too dangerous.

Today, in this Sixty fifth Anniversary year as you pass that Bugatti or stroll along Boulevard des Moulins remember, that whilst fashions might change and the name today “Label Vie” might hide that little “Scotch Tea Shop”, those two stories of quite raw courage.

It is only by understanding the past that the future is safeguarded.

Peter Chapman.