L'invasion

1940

She was standing on the doorstep waiting, her 10 months old daughter perched on her hip, her belly not swelled yet with her second pregnancy. Jean, her husband had been called up into to the "Arme de l'Air". On her own in the school house, she knew "they" were coming.

The past few days had proved to be a challenge beyond imagination. More than 1 million refugees had poured into this corner of Normandy, panicked out of their minds, having abandoned everything behind them as the German troops were swarming the Northern regions. As the mayor's office was the other side of the small school building, crowds of people had tried to seek help but that was beyond the village resources. My mother had tried all she could to soothe the distress of those poor people who stopped only momentarily out of sheer exhaustion and desperation.

At the age of 23, nothing had prepared her for this slice of human distress. She had been brought up in a very strict military fashion by her father who'd fought in WW1 and was injured twice at Verdun and her mother who may have been even stricter and a strong Catholic. She had witnesed the aftermath of the Great War, the hardship in the rural areas where women had to take the place of their men who had been killed in their droves, all the sorrow, the hard times, the desolation. Now that the war babies were men, it was starting all over again.

Despite the horror stories the refugees were bringing with them, she had remembered her father's words: "You don't give in to the enemy, you fight for your rights and for your freedom". As the village school mistress, she felt the duty to set an example and, together with the mayor and the priest, had appealed to the local inhabitants to stay calm and dignified and not to abandon their houses. Running away was admitting defeat. Out of the 500 villagers, only a handful left.

She was waiting. The last and most pathetic refugees were dwindling away.Yes, "they" were coming for sure! The faint sound of a motorcade soon grew to confirm her dread.

The first motorbike stopped, bringing the convoy to a halt and the officer dismounted. She steeled herself, she would not show her trembling. The officer came straight to her, immaculate in his riding gear and very direct in his near perfect French:

"Madame, my men are billeted here and I want a room for myself"
"Monsieur, I am a woman on my own and it is not proper for me to have a man in my house!"
"Madame! I am an officer and a gentleman and ,in any case, this is an order and France is KAPUT!"
"Monsieur, your men can camp here if they must, I will show you to your room but tonight, my baby and I will spend the night at my friend's house."

In the next few days, the local chateau was commandeered and the village life was upturned under the oppressive rule of the SS 2nd Panzer Division. The French Government had retreated south to Bordeaux, the county town inabitants had almost all fled, Paris was occupied, and, horror of horrors, Petain who was now Head of State, signed an armistice. The only gleam of hope rested with an appeal to resist by an unknown French general called...de Gaulle, speaking from London on the French service of the BBC. Resist, how do you do that?

Father's return

63 years on...

A car stopped outside the school house where we lived and the man got out slowly and painfully. We’d rushed to the window as we knew Papa was due back today. Maman raised her hands to her face and gasped. She yanked the door open , rushed toward the gate but stopped short. He kind of lurched forward and fell into her arms. Then, very slowly they edged their way back to the house.

As they were approaching, I reached for my brother’s hand. He too was shaking. The dark, skeletal silhouette filled the door frame and we recoiled in horror. Could that person be our dear Papa we had been waiting for so excitedly? Maman had told us to expect him not to be very well and to be kind to him and quiet. We weren’t ready for the sight of him….surely, this couldn’t be our Papa?

We hadn’t seen him for nearly nine months and at the tender age of six and five, our memory of him could have been a bit confused. This man seemed to be half the size of dear Papa whom we remembered was so strong he could lift us up in the air and catch us on the way down. He was great at football and could throw a javelin further than any one else. He could even lift Maman and carry her up the stairs running! And he laughed, made every one laugh…but this man was expressionless and awesome.

He sat down awkwardly on the straw chair and leant heavily on the kitchen table, head bowed and slowly swinging from side to side. His eyes didn’t focus, his mouth half open…you could see some black holes where some teeth were missing. Slowly, he slid onto the floor into a foetal position and started to cry.

My brother and I had retreated into a far corner of the kitchen, horror struck. We found ourselves crouched on the floor and gazing fixedly at the physical wreck lying there a few metres away. He was so thin we could see through his skin great patterns of veins throbbing like twisting snakes. The hands were shaking convulsively and the nails were partly missing. His clothes seemed to belong to a much bigger man (my mother later told me he weighed thirty five kilos!). We couldn’t bring ourselves to look at the face and yet I remember the sunken dead eyes, the patchy scalp, the hollow temples and the rictus that seemed to threaten us.

Suddenly the kitchen door opened and our uncle came in, followed by two or three friends. They found us in the corner and whisked us out of the house. It was weeks before we could go back home. Life was never the same, we never laughed and laughed, we always had to be kind to him, and quiet.

Later, we began to learn about Resistance, Gestapo, concentration camps and the horrors of war. Life was never the same….