Andrée's War (7 page)

Well, I am going to bed. I am getting through loads of books. I am lucky, it is a means of escape.

5 August 1940
It is unbearably hot at the moment. We are leading the most awful life.

12 August 1940
Last Saturday at three in the afternoon, we left Paris and went to Rochefort by bike. We had a difficult journey because we had Yvette with us
[Andrée's sister was only 13 at the time, and not used to cycling]
and it was seriously hot. We finally got to Rochefort in time for supper. Mémé had prepared a pot-au-feu and an absolutely delicious prune compote. We slept at Papa's house and in the morning Mémé brought us
breakfast in bed: café au lait, bread, baguette and two different types of jam, prune and a gooseberry one. After breakfast we went for a walk around the village, we swam in the lake and then visited the old church, which dominates the village. We returned to Papa's house where the most amazing lunch was waiting for us, mackerel, olive oil, a steak with potatoes sautéed in butter and a fresh lettuce salad. There was the most delicious chocolate mousse and finally a small coffee. It was then time to return home, leaving Yvette with her dear Mémé.

We left at 13.30 and initially it seemed quite an easy road, but then we took a wrong turning and cycled an extra six kilometres. At 15.30 we were on the Quai d'Orsay, where we were very greedy and had a mirabelle tart. We then travelled along the Quai d'Orsay and my brakes gave in. It was so annoying. Having repaired them, we managed to get to the Pont de Sèvres and then along the Seine to the Place de la Concorde. After that we had a quick stop and a coffee at the Eiffel Tower. We had cycled 114 kilometres.

13 August 1940
There was an article in the newspaper today that talks about couriers travelling between Paris and Brussels, and so I decided to give one of them a letter for Tante Léa, asking her whether I could go and stay with her and l'Oncle Auguste. It won't be easy. Firstly I will have to get permission from Police Headquarters and then from the Kommandantur
[the Nazi headquarters in Paris].
I wonder which will be more difficult. Then I will have to buy a railway ticket. Well, one rarely has fun without working hard at it.

On Saturday Papa brought half the furniture from our house in Mesnil-le-Roi back to Paris. Why on earth did he have to do that? It is impossible to find milk, cheese, oil or soap in Paris at the moment. There is no coffee and one hardly ever finds rice or pasta.

Well, no point in complaining.

Germany is preparing for her big battle with England. We are all very worried and awaiting the outcome. Hitler told us he would be in London
by the middle of August. It is already the 13th, so he had better get a move on. On the BBC they are saying, ‘Hurry up, you only have two days left.'

At the office, M. Kervella is ill, probably drunk because it is his way of hiding his worries. Madame Chantebout has caused absolute uproar here at the office because she has managed to get her husband released from a prisoner-of-war camp and Madame Joly is divorcing her husband.

21 August 1940
In eight days' time I will be twenty. I am trying to decide whether or not to go to Brussels. It would all be rather complicated. Tante Léa would love to have me to stay, but I need the permission of M. Blanc, the Acting Head of Police. Renée will hopefully help me with this and then I will ask Margit to help me obtain the permit from the Kommandantur. Is it worth it? It will be so expensive.

Last Sunday Margit and I went cycling along the Marne. We left via the Bois de Vincennes. We found an abandoned railway track and cycled along it and found we were on the Eastern railway track of France. We eventually reached Gournay and we got rather sunburnt. I am as brown as a berry. I look great.

…

My trip to Brussels is not going to happen. It would have been unbelievably expensive. M. Blanc told Renée that I would first need the permission of the commandant and that he would be surprised if permission was granted. I think it would be easier if I spent my holidays in Fontainebleau. We thought Alain had typhoid, but luckily the doctor has just told us that it was only a stomach infection. Yvette is coming home from Rochefort tomorrow.

22 August 1940
Dear diary, it is almost a whole year since I started writing in this little booklet. We are no longer at war. We have been defeated. As a nation we are worthless.

Germany is planning her invasion of England, but we are still waiting
for it to happen. They may not have reached London, but they are bombing the whole of England and the British are bombing the German towns. There are thousands of civilians being killed. War is just so awful. What a wonderful day it will be when the people of the world can get on together. Meanwhile, communication between the Free Zone and the Occupied Zone has been cut.

As for life in Paris, we have to queue for everything. It is absolutely awful. We queue for butter, milk, coffee, cheese, meat, if we can find it, and oil.

23 August 1940
I now have a little blue diary. I love anything blue.

Life is so sad. It is impossible for a young French girl to be carefree and happy because the Germans are occupying most of my country. Maybe it does not upset everyone in the same way, but for me to walk around Paris, my home town, to see Germans travelling around in cars and admiring the sights, is heart-breaking. I do understand the government's position in allowing them to march in, not wanting Paris to be bombed and destroyed, but it is very hard. In Paris the occupying forces are behaving themselves, but in the country we hear they are despicable and looting whatever they can find. I am living in the hope that the British will get them and it will not be too soon. Even the German soldiers have had enough. They are always at war and their victory has been too quick.
*

24 August 1940
I am now working in the north-eastern part of the building. It is awful. I work with the most dreadful group of people. I have decided to ask the Head of Police to find me another job, that is if I am not made to return to the Tourist Department. I am now in the Passport Department.

30 August 1940
Madame Chantebout and I spend most of our time going between cooperatives and Police Headquarters. In the morning we went to the rue Lagrange looking for lard and butter and in the afternoon we went to the rue Chanoinesse to see what we could find. Yesterday I found some chocolate and noodles.

31 August 1940
The night before going on holiday I had to go to Monsieur Blanc, the Acting Head of Police, for my ID card. He told me to write it out myself. I did think this was rather odd. He told me to bring it back for him to sign and he just signed it without checking or even looking at it.

For the next couple of months, Andrée did not write anything in her diary. She began again on 11 November, including in one volume the brief line: ‘Bagarre à l'Étoile' (fighting at L'Étoile). That is her only written reference to the student protests – she was presumably aware of the dangers of incriminating herself by including details, should her diaries ever be found by the authorities.

11 November 1940
I am now working for Monsieur Pouillet on the first floor of the building. Here we organise and keep up-to-date information on the foreigners living in Paris. It has to be carefully kept in files and easily accessible to the Germans.

 

*
Andrée was aware of the Battle of Britain currently taking place and, like many of her compatriots, hoped that the RAF would win. Working at Police Headquarters, she may have heard some of the Germans talking about the war. Her entry here may refer to the cynical position adopted by some that the Germans felt they had won too quickly, and would have preferred a more challenging fight. Not all Wehrmacht soldiers were Nazis, of course, and many may not have wanted to wage war in the first place.

T
o understand why a young, fairly sheltered and otherwise carefree woman of Andrée's upbringing would decide to join the French Resistance, it helps to read her reaction following the German invasion of France in 1939 and the Wehrmacht's entry into Paris in 1940.

On 15 September 1939 Andrée wrote:

We are now at war and we will have to live with it. Hitler has to be stopped. We must believe in France's victory and shout from the rooftops of Paris
‘Vive la France'.

Ten days later, she added:

Alain just keeps repeating ‘what bastards they all are'. As for me, I am totally heartbroken.

By the early autumn of 1940, daily life in Paris was beginning to return to something approaching normality, if such a situation could be described as normal. Following one of the hottest summers on record, when 95°F had been recorded on the streets of Paris, those Parisians who had escaped the Nazis and the city for the hot summer months began slowly to return. Yvonne, Alain, Yvette and Claude had attempted without success to board a British frigate in Nantes destined for Portsmouth. There were too many people trying to leave France and they reached Nantes too late to get on. Alain tried to get on a ship on his own, but was told by a British sailor to return to his ‘Mummy'. He never quite forgave the British for the slight. The family went instead to stay with friends in the Sables-d'Olonne, eventually
returning to Paris about six weeks later. Despite hoping that they had managed to make it safely to Britain, Andrée was beside herself with joy to hear her mother's voice greeting the concierge on their return. Yvette and Claude, at twelve and ten years old respectively, were due to start school, while Alain was about to start university.

Returning to Paris would prove challenging. Tall, with strong Flemish characteristics and an aristocratic presence, no one could miss Yvonne. Holding her two daughters by the hand, she made her way towards the Place de l'Opéra for the first day of school. As she walked towards the Café de la Paix, Yvonne saw that the road signs had been renamed in German; the swastika flag was flying from several rooftops; and everywhere she looked she saw German soldiers walking along the streets. Hurrying on, her daughters listened as she promised: ‘We got rid of them in 1918 and we will get rid of them again.'

Emerging from the
métro
station one morning, on his way to register at the Sorbonne, Alain picked up a copy of that morning's
Figaro
.
*
As the young newspaper vendor gave him his change, Alain made a sarcastic comment about the accuracy of news reports now that the invading forces were in control of the press. As he stood in line to register at la Faculté de Droit, he looked through the paper and realised how heavily the morning's press must have been censored. Alain was not slow in taking a decision; before he had even registered as a student, he made up his mind to publish an underground weekly pamphlet or news-sheet. He would name it
La France
, and its role would be to inform Parisians of what was going on in the world, alongside articles enticing readers to resist the occupation.

Freshers' Week 1940 at the Sorbonne was different from previous years. Being a student in 1940 would not be about working hard and having fun. France was at war. As the corridors of the university filled with youngsters registering for their chosen courses, conversations bubbled up about the
German invasion of France and the Wehrmacht entry into Paris, and how they had been betrayed.

The atmosphere was one of bitterness and resentment as the students tried to come to terms with the speed of their country's defeat. They felt let down by their army and by a group of politicians whose management of the political situation and handling of its armed forces had been so disastrous.

One new student at the Sorbonne in 1940 was Noël Le Clercq, a young twenty-year-old who had given up officer training at Saint-Cyr to enrol as a law student. His thick, wavy blond hair and blue eyes lent him a somewhat Nordic appearance and, being a little older than his fellow students, his confident and authoritative manner endeared him to many of his contemporaries. Noël gathered his new friends around him and rallied them to resist the occupation. It was not long before Alain was attending his impromptu lectures, followed by many hours of heavy drinking in the smoky atmosphere of the Café Harcourt (whose previous patrons included Oscar Wilde) on the boulevard Saint-Michel. The two students became firm friends and Alain's plan for his underground news-sheet evolved into a joint venture.

With a heavily censored press and no broadcast media, news travelled very slowly. Listening to the BBC, a lifeline to the outside world, was forbidden and owning a radio could lead to immediate arrest; despite this, Edmond owned a radio, which he kept in the cellar but brought up regularly to listen to BBC broadcasts. In search of assistance, Alain asked his brother-in-law to introduce him to Henri Jeanson, the editor of
Aujourd'hui
– later to become one of France's most prominent newspapers. Jeanson, now in his early forties, had become friendly with Steve Passeur back in the 1920s when working as a film critic. In December 1939, Jeanson had been sentenced to five years' imprisonment for his published pacifist reports but was later released by the Minister of the Interior, Monsieur Campinchi. He had been appointed editor of
Aujourd'hui
in August 1940 and the first issue was released in September.
*
Alain and Noël were allowed to make regular
visits to Jeanson's office, listening out for any scraps of information that might be helpful in compiling
La France
. On one occasion, pushed for time, the pair met at the Café Harcourt to draft a forthcoming article. Just as they finished writing, a group of Nazi soldiers walked into the café and began a search of the customers, demanding to see their ID cards. Alain and Noël managed to move to the back of the café and escape through a window, but they vowed to be more cautious in future.
*