with millions of Parisians Farjeon fled the capital (by what means is unknown) and in the company of many hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived on the south coast of France in June 1940 with the aim of somehow reaching Britain. Farjeon reported that she escaped France on the last collier leaving Nice for Tangier. The evacuation of British civilian refugees who had assembled at various ports on the Provençal coast was organised by the British Admiralty, using whatever shipping could be assembled, most of it cargo ships, between 23 and 26 June. A number of British coal ships picked up mostly civilian refugees at Nice and Cannes before calling in at Marseille, Sète and Port-Vendres to take on more and then made their way to Gibraltar and Tangier. One coal ship, Ashcroft, was delayed by engine trouble and so was the last to leave France. She made the voyage towards Tangier unescorted and was attacked by an Italian submarine. The sole gunner returned fire and the ship made a smoke screen enabling her to escape. Aside from the danger from Italian submarines, conditions on the week-long voyage were filthy and insanitary, with dangerous overcrowding and a severe shortage of food and water. After her arrival in Tangier Farjeon eventually trans-shipped to a passenger vessel to join a protective convoy for the journey to Britain. Like all convoys on this route, Farjeon's took a wide diversion into the Atlantic and around Ireland on its way to Britain in order to avoid naval mines. Farjeon arrived in London just before her seventeenth birthday in September 1940. The Blitz, the sustained campaign of German aerial bombing of London, had just begun. "We went straight to an air-raid shelter," she recalled. "I had no idea about the bombardment of London. It was quite a shock." Entertaining Free French Forces Farjeon wanted to serve the war effort and having spent all her life so far in France, she joined the Corps des Volontaires françaises or CVF (English: The Corps of French Female Volunteers), a military auxiliary service established by the Free French Forces in London in November 1940. With her musical knowledge and teenage vivacity she was assigned to entertainment and was involved for the duration of the war and for some time afterwards in entertainment for the Free French Forces in London. By her own estimation she was not very good at it