Le Devoir de Mémoire

The Duty of Memory

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on. …Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. …Voltaire

1 Chapter

The Tailor

Beauvais, France 1994

The white-haired man folds his hands behind his back thoughtfully, before turning to the nicely dressed young woman seated across the room.

“Are you sure you want to hear the ramblings of an old man?”

The woman nods, removes a tape recorder from her briefcase and places a cassette in the recorder.

The man reaches out his hand to accept a sheet of paper she offers. He walks across the room toward the window. He pulls an immaculate white handkerchief from the pocket of his finely tailored black jacket. He cleans his glasses, neatly replaces the handkerchief, and positions his glasses on his nose. For a long while he stands there, seemingly transported to another time, another place, his erect figure outlined against the dim light.

She watches despair cross his face as he lingers over the words for a moment.

At last, he looks up, his fingers still gripping the document. His eyes hold hers. “Yes, I recall the first time I saw one of these pasted on the wall of a building. It will stay with me as long as memory itself.  I can see the pattern of the bricks and the way the shadow fell across these words.

WARNING

“All males who come to the aid, either directly or indirectly, of the crews of enemy aircraft coming down in parachutes, or having made a forced landing, helps in their escape, hides them, or comes to their aid in any fashion, will be shot on the spot.

 Women who render the same help will be sent to concentration camps in Germany.”

 Paris 22 September 1941

General Stülpnagel

 Military Commander in France

 “I would like to know how you and others came to ignore this warning.

I want to understand what motivated someone to risk their lives and the lives of their families in the Resistance. I want to hear small stories that defined everyday life within the backdrop of the war; not stories of spies or guerillas hiding in the woods. I want to learn about the unlikely heroes, the doctor, the mechanic, the tailor if you will.”

The man clears his throat. “I want to do it. I would very much like to tell you the story. I appreciate this opportunity. It's more important to me than you can realize.”

The woman moves her eyes slowly over the neat, full waves of perfectly combed hair—as white as his starched and impeccably ironed shirt. Her gaze pauses on his cufflinks—the blue, white and red vertical bands of the French flag.

The appearance of the aging tailor is difficult to equate with a war hero—a cog in the Kummel Escape Network of the French Underground.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“Yes.” Her pen is poised over a legal pad.

“Okay, where should I start?”

“First tell me about yourself—Radziminski—definitely not a French name.”

“Yes, I suppose that does seem unusual. My parents moved to Germany from Poland. We lived a better life in that country than we would have had in Poland. I was born in Germany in 1910.”

“Ah, that explains the name. So, Germany was your first home?”

The tailor pauses. “But this is not the story I want to tell; I want to talk of the Resistance—not of myself.”

“Yes, we will get to that.” The woman nods.

Bruno stares out the window into the distance. Minutes tick away before she asks, “Is it painful for you to recall—what happened during the war?”

He looks up briefly yet doesn’t meet her eyes. He allows himself a moment of introspection. He’d been a lot of different men. But at this moment he is a tired old man— A humble tailor, who never wanted to be anything more, yet took pride in what he'd done in a former life. Now, he wants to preserve a legacy.

He glances at a pile of photographs nearby. "You never knew if you were going to die the next day.” He picks up one of the faded snapshots. “When you made a friend then, you made a friend for life.”

2 Chapter

The Airmen

Creil, France May 10, 1944

Captain James “Tex” Joy watches the provincial villages glide past as they awaken 30,000 feet below. The cattle and sheep graze in the fields oblivious to the drone of thirty-six B-26 Marauders belonging to the 585th Bomb Squadron of the 9th Air Force— the “Bridge Busters” advancing toward the train station at Creil. Soaring over the villages in the morning light it is almost possible to forget there is a war taking place down there.

Almost.

Before dawn, they’d crossed the channel from Essex, England in six clusters of six-ship flights carrying sixty-eight tons of bombs headed for their target fifty miles north of Paris.

A train trundles along the tracks, puffing serenely on the way to the station. The engine catches a glint of sun and shoots it back in flashing winks into the alert eyes of Captain Joy. It looks very small from this altitude— a toy train—filled with toy people.

The Marauders cut through white clouds.

Tex signals for his co-pilot to take over. Lt. “Johnny” Johnson nods and sticks up his thumb. The pilot leans back and pulls off his silk gloves; wiggles his fingers trying to get rid of the unpleasant feeling. His hands always feel clammy encased in those gloves.  He reaches into the pocket of his flight suit for a pack of Lucky’s, lights one and offers it to Johnny. Johnny takes it and Tex lights another for himself.

§

The train pulls to a halt in the station.

Jean-Luc dangles his legs from the wooden bench-seat on the train. He looks down. The scuffed shoes are too tight for his fast-growing feet, except Mama can’t afford to buy new ones on the black market. Mama has done her best to bring a shine to the worn leather.

He would rather be in his stocking feet even if he has to wear his best clothes because at the next station, in Clermont, Grandmere will be waiting to smother him with her special kisses.

Mama slips her hand into a little basket and pulls out a small hunk of cheese and a tiny bit of a baguette—all that’s left from their rations. Mama can always tell when he’s hungry.

Jean-Luc reaches out his tiny hand to receive the bread.

§

At about 10:30 am Bill, the box-lead navigator zeros his focus. He spots the town glimmering in the early morning light. Bill isn’t a regular member of this crew, he’s standing in for Tony. Tony is grounded because of the flu, but Tex is glad to have Bill along. He is one of the best bombardiers in the outfit.

The interphone crackles. “Captain, I see our target.”

Tex resumes control of the plane. “Can you knock it out?”

“If you’ll turn 20 degrees to the right I can.”

Tex takes a breath and glances at Johnny. He focuses on their mission—not on the train loaded with innocent civilians. The mission: to annihilate the depots of locomotives, the marshalling yards and the rotunda.

“Beautiful goddam day to destroy a train station. Bombs Away!”

It’s all impersonal—.

As they approach the target Bill releases his load and the other bombardiers in their formation drop their bombs on his signal.

Bomb bay doors open and in successive waves nearly 62 tons of bombs drop.

The ship lightens.

“Come on there, big guys...” Bill watches for the black smoke to rise from their hits.

Tex hears his radio operator, “Handy,” whoop from the radio speaker "SOOO-o-oeyyy!" 

Tex grins at Johnny. “Crazy Arky lawyer.”

The pilot banks the plane to return to their flight base.

§

Jean-Luc never tasted the bread. He never felt Grandmere’s kisses.

It’s all impersonal—until it becomes personal.

3 Chapter

The Tailor

Beauvais, France 1994

Bruno rubs his finger across the faded snapshot in his hand, smiles and repeats, “when you made a friend then, you made a friend for life.” In a low voice he says, “this isn’t the photo I’m looking for.” He continues to hold the snapshot in his hand as he rises and moves to a table near the window.

The girl watches in silence as he crosses the room.

It’s still early afternoon and the sunlight slants through the western windows in a long unbroken shaft pushing past the lace curtains. “The picture I want was taken in Paris in 1952 when one of the American airmen we helped came to visit.” He lifts the lid from the carton he has placed on the table, and shuffles through mementos and yellowed papers, creating a neat pile beside the box. He pulls out a battered cookie tin and sorts through sepia colored photographs.

“Ah, here it is.” His steady hand holds out the photo; a group of smiling people gathered around a table in what appears to be a restaurant. His voice catches. “This is Louis Watts, and us. Louis remained in the Air Force after the war; he was serving in French Morocco when he came for this visit.” The tailor’s voice takes on a nostalgic monotone. “We exchanged letters until his death ten years ago.” His thoughts seem to linger there for a moment. “A few years after this picture, 1959, I think, he was sent to Germany for three years. We had many visits during that time. My sons and his children played together. We would send them outside...and there was no problem that mine spoke no English and his spoke no French...children have a way to overcome such problems.”

The interviewer gently steers Bruno back to the subject.

“So, your time with the Kummel network, you were helping downed Allied airmen?”

Bruno nods. He gives her a swift reassuring smile. “Yes, yes. The mission was to collect downed airmen and send them back to England. Here, everyone in this picture, was part of the network.” He points one at a time to the faces smiling at the camera. “Madame Walker, she was an English woman who lived in Paris. I imagine she does not even know how many airmen she found shelter for. Later I will tell her story.” Tears gather as he points and names each. “Jean, Henri, Rene....” The lines in his forehead deepen. “But I think you don’t want to look at old photos.” He laughs with discernable self-deprecation. “As I was saying, we collected downed airmen; we were a group of about 130 agents. We helped find shelter and civilian clothing for them... American— English— Australian... and forged false identity papers.”

At this he is silent; and she waits a moment, then asks, “how is it that you, born in Germany, the son of a German soldier killed at Verdun, how is it that you came to be a part of the Kummel escape line?”

His face grew pensive. "Perhaps," he began, “first I will tell you about the network. Kummel was part of the Burgundy escape network. We worked in the region north of Paris.” He went on, “Kummel didn’t come into existence until February 1944. Of course, by that time, the war had been going on four years, and La France Libre, Free French Government was well established in London. The line, part of the French Intelligence services, operated in close liaison with the highly organized British Intelligence Service, MI9.

 Originally the purpose was to recover Allied airmen found north of Paris. Kummel would deliver them to Paris, into the hands of Madame Walker and others. Eventually Burgundy would evacuate them across the Pyrenees to Spain. It was a dangerous crossing. Guides, mostly young women, took the airmen by foot and by train across the mountains. In San Sebastian, the guides would deliver the airman into the hands of the British services and they would be taken to the British embassy in Madrid to ensure their repatriation to Great Britain. But after June 6, D-Day, it became too dangerous to reach Spain by train. Our goal was then to keep the evading airmen hidden in safe houses, without evacuation to Spain, until the day of liberation of northern France.”

The young woman raises her eyes to meet his. “So, if I remember correctly, Paris fell to Nazi Germany on June 14, 1940, one month after the German Wehrmacht stormed into France.” She considers this fact for a moment. “The Allied invasion of Normandy was June 6, 1944.”

Bruno’s gaze drifts beyond the open window. “Yes, it came four years, almost to the day, after the Germans invaded.” He shakes his head. “Then Allied troops, with the help of the French resistance liberated Paris August 25, 1944 and the next day Charles de Gaulle led a joyous march down the Champs d'Elysees. France once more belonged to the French people.”

“During those three months, June to August, how many Allied airmen did you shelter?”

“I don't know for sure. But In the six months between the time Patrick Hovelacque organized Kummel and the day Paris was liberated, there were around 70, I think.” He smiles self-consciously. “For me, personally about twenty, possibly a few more.” He thinks for a breath. “Louis Watts, in the photo I showed you, he was one of those we could not take to Spain.”

4 Chapter

The Airmen

France May 10, 1944

All of it, the dropping of the bombs, the push, push, push of his speeding heart, the shaking limbs, the shallow breathing, the widened pupils and racing brain—it all STOPS, and for whatever reason, Tex suddenly feels almost unbearably lonely. He starts to question everything in his life. He has grown accustomed to this. It's a temporary condition. After thirty-three missions, one journey fades into another.

He peels the wrapper from a candy bar. The chocolate vanishes between rows of white teeth, but frozen in the temperature of the cockpit, the candy evades the eager first bite. As his lips close on the second bite his teeth meet. He pauses, savoring the flavor and remembers their pre-dawn breakfast — it has been almost eight hours since the crew finished— fresh eggs, not the usual powdered eggs, piles of bacon and stacks of buttered toast. A condemned man’s last meal?

Before he held his breath as the B-26 lifted off the end of a darkened runway in England and he raised the gear and flaps to slash through the clouds on its way to the railway station in France, he put his things in order—wrote a letter to his wife, packed his B4 bag with his kit box and left some money in an envelope with a note saying he had a dress uniform at the tailors ready for pick-up. He went through this ritual before his first mission—for fear of not returning—for the following thirty-two times it was out of superstition, for luck, whatever you want to call it, it was just something he needed to do.

After the bomb bay doors had opened and tons of bombs dropped on the station, completing the mission to strike the railroad yard in support of the pending invasion of Normandy, he turned the plane to lead the formation back to home base. In just a few more hours his men and the crews of the other B-26 Marauders will have a hot meal and head for the barracks for a well-earned rest. He is tired. It takes strength to fly a B-26 formation.

Johnny stares ahead in dead silence glancing at the pilot from time to time, but for the most part keeps his eyes averted. He has seen this silent contemplation from the Captain many times, but it is impossible to tell whether he is simply tired or it is remorse he is feeling— or something else? Johnny’s own thoughts and emotions lay scattered in confusion—ideas circling continually— meandering, running together then swirling apart. He reflects on how surprisingly quickly he has become accustomed to the abhorrence of dropping bombs on innocent people. He knows it is a tool for survival—a necessity. But what horrifies him is not so much the deed itself, but that it has ceased to horrify him— that he has so easily become indifferent to what ought to repulse him...

...squeeee-thwack!  His head twists to the left. From below, the whistle and boom of white-hot shrapnel screams. Whump! Thud. The plane rocks sharply. The stench of flak bursts fills his nostrils.

Tex peers through the side window, sees anti-aircraft fire from below. “...sons of bitches are trying to kill us, Johnny.” Another deafening mushroom explosion of flak blows the plane out of formation twisting the wheel from the pilot’s hands. The starboard engine glows; orange flames engulf it, blue black smoke billows. His eyes flicker from airspeed to altimeter; the controls go limp in his hands. The needle on the radio compass spins.

From behind, Handy shouts, “Trouble, Captain, we’ve lost radio contact and the interphone system is down.” The words bore ominously into his ears.

The aircraft is losing altitude. Tex strains his eyes to catch a glimpse of the remaining thirty-five airplanes of the combat box— away and away they fade into a vari-colored blur behind the clouds. A bar of smoke curves behind the plane as it gradually sinks until they are all alone in the sky. They have no chance to return to England in the crippled plane.

The Martin B-26 Marauder is one of the most difficult and dangerous ships from which to bail out, but at 8000 feet the six airmen have no choice but to leave the plane.

“Come on,” Tex yells to Johnny, “God help us we’ll have to get out of here. With luck, we’ll make it.”

He screams into the dead intercom. “Bail Out Bail out!”

Johnny hits the alarm bell.

The men prepare to exit, each one going through the procedure in his mind. No amount of training can prepare you for the real deal.

 Handy feels for his escape kit. Checks his left hand for his wedding ring. His dog tags are cold against his skin. He snaps his parachute onto the harness and heads to the fore bomb bay.

The plane wants to go over on its back, but Tex tries to keep the plane as level as he can to avoid hitting the crew as they bail out. He signals all is okay and Handy drops.

Handy starts counting before pulling the ripcord. How many? His memory goes blank. Three? Five? Ten? If he gets clear of the aircraft before pulling the cord it should be okay. He says a prayer, pulls the ring, and listens as the little fluttering sounds reach his ears and a bulging roundness forms a white silk canopy above his head. He drifts toward the ground. A sense of exaltation overpowers him—he has survived this moment. The world becomes perfectly silent, a flight of birds crosses the sky, and in this extraordinary peace, the sound of the crippled plane fades among the birds.

Johnny climbs into the bay and gives Tex a nod before he disappears. The rest of the crew make their way out of the aircraft in specified order.

 Left alone inside the plane, Tex clips on his parachute and struggles out of his seat. Pulling his parachute pack clear he has trouble getting his leg passed the control column. He reaches down with his free hand in a desperate attempt to pull his leg clear, at the same time trying to keep the aircraft on an even keel. In that split second the Plexiglass windshield shatters in an ear-piercing clatter. Large dull edged pieces whizz past and graze his face. He feels a hit but doesn’t think much about the blood frozen on his face. With an excessive adrenaline-boosted tug, he releases his leg as hydraulic fluid spews over the cockpit. Dragging one leg, he manages to reach the bomb bay and dives through the opening.

Billowing down he feels the harness straps biting into his flesh. Below, off to the north, a streamer of smoke bursting from the wing, the plane is a descending black outline against the clouds.

The pilot cranes his neck from side to side looking for chutes. None in sight. Sweating, mouth dry, near panic, he twists and turns until he finally counts three. Where are the other two? The mad confusion fades away and is followed by a moment of euphoria as he spots all chutes hanging from the sky.

He thinks about that half-eaten candy bar, about the newly tailored uniform he’ll never wear, about his wife back home in Texas, then looks straight down at Mother Earth. The green reflection of a copse of trees, very lovely. Leaves are alive; trees are alive; his men are alive. Images become clearer as the ground comes closer. He checks the terrain. A farmer working his field with a horse-drawn tiller. A man standing beside a bicycle looking up at the easy targets dangling helpless from their white parachutes.

Left alone, the B-26 loses altitude in a large circle, ploughs a groove in an open field of clover near the small village of Léglantiers, and explodes after hitting the ground.

5 Chapter

The Tailor

Beauvais, France 1994

The interviewer raises her pen to her lips and taps gently. “Your father was a German soldier killed in battle, yet you were on the opposite side, in the French army at Dunkerque? Maybe you can tell me a little more about that.” She looks at him blankly, long enough for him to realize further explanations are necessary.

He gives an almost apologetically soft, short laugh, “Yes I guess that does seem odd.” At this he is silent while he prepares a pipe signaling this might be a long story. He lights the pipe and chuffs out a cloud of white smoke. “It's like this,” he says with a glance in her direction. “It was a pivotal journey, a fateful journey. It seems like many centuries. Yet I remember it as I remember yesterday....

It was in the spring of 1916. Our family was living in a village near Dortmund in north-western Germany. I had just turned six years old when my mama got the news that my father, Joseph, a soldier in the Imperial German Army, had been killed at Verdun.

I didn't realize what was happening at the time. It had no meaning for me. I had only small shards of fleeting memories of him. To me he was little more than a faceless stranger. To my younger brothers he was even less. My sister was not yet born; she was the child of Michel, my stepfather.

Not being told anything, I was left to wonder. Back then children were not told of things that concerned grown people.

The scene of that day, the memory I carry in my mind is of my mother and Aunt Sophie. I remember my mother putting down her iron to let Aunt Sophie into the house. I remember Aunt Sophie cooking dinner for us and the flies buzzing around the table.

It was only many years later that I realized that was the day Mama got the news about my father. On that day she began to wear her black gingham dresses, very starched and stiff.

Mama was a twenty-seven-year-old widow with three young children. The conventions in those days for widows was to wear mourning attire and respect a long period of mourning; it was frowned upon for them to remarry too soon.

Being Polish—not a German Citizen, she didn’t qualify for a widow’s pension. She needed a way to manage with a manless household and learn to support the family. She had a knack with a thread and needle. Sewed beautifully, an art which her early convent education had taught her. So, she sewed.

At first it was only baby clothes and children’s dresses. On the diminutive night-dresses or tiny bibs, she would add the most elegant embroidery or lace trims. Before long she developed a reputation as a fine couturière and started to take in sewing for well-to-do women in town. They would bring her silks and linens they had hidden away—fabrics not available during the war. As her business grew tables were piled with orderly stacks of every sort of clothing. After a while, she had enough money to buy a sewing machine. It was of a lumbering, by-gone make but her foot worked the treadle with ease.

I remember watching her hands as she worked. Never were there hands more exquisite than hers— roughened and needle-scarred as they were. I watched, fascinated when she threaded her needle holding it up to the light and squinting at it; or when she adjusted her dented thimble to her tapered middle finger. With a mixture of wide-eyed curiosity and unabashed interest I studied her needle, drawing the thread smoothly to a gentle pause holding together the folds of the delicate silks. I took pleasure in watching her strong pointed fingers pinching and poking a fine piece of linen spread across her lap; her needle flashing; stopping to pat a seam here, to run a calculating eye along a hem or ruffle. When she sewed, calm, content quiet descended on her. At the end of each day she folded her sewing, placing thimble, scissors, and thread all neatly together in a roll, which she pinned securely.

Covertly I watched and I examined, and I learned.

I imagined how happy she would be if I could learn to sew with her skill. I told myself it was about my wanting to help support the family so Mama wouldn’t have to work so hard.  But possibly I did want to do a little gloating, show my brothers how grown up I was; wanting to see their jealous faces as she showered me with grateful kisses...but I didn’t admit that to myself.

On the day I was proudly ready to show what I had learned—I was perhaps 8 years old— Mama was busy at the sewing-machine, filling the room with a resounding clatter and whir.

I picked up a piece of white flannel and smoothed it on the cutting-table.

Mama turned to take her scissors from the table.

Through my eyelashes I could see her looking at me. She put down her scissors; there was no sign of a smile on her face, nor was the kindly twinkle of amusement to be seen in her eyes— that twinkle that I had learned to look for. But I went on serenely cutting and snipping and pinning. She continued to look on in disapproval while I experimented with scraps of cloth, and pins, and chalk, and scissors. Finally, I could bear her silence no longer.

‘I'm going to help you work,’ I said, ‘I’m the man of the house. I’ll help to support the family.’

As I looked away from my needle and thread, it pricked me. I did not feel the tiny wound at first, so I pulled the needle through the cloth; the thread followed, and I pulled it to full length. My quick movement had drawn the sharp needle through the fleshy tip of my finger. I howled and loosened my grip on the bit of flannel.

Mama took my hand and gently removed the thread, then stooped and taking my face between her hands kissed me on the forehead, while the wounds of the dressmaker's needle still bled onto the flannel.

‘I must say you ruined this,’ she remarked, looking at the flannel. ‘I'm afraid there's blood on it.’

‘Blood ...’ I repeated.

‘Blood....’ Her sigh was tender. She folded her hands quietly on her knee, waiting.

I said nothing and refused to cry.

She glanced toward the bit of fabric on the table. ‘Put that in the rag bin,’ she said sternly, but could not hide a thin smile.

‘If you want to learn to sew, I will teach you in the proper manner’

And so, I learned to sew, and I became her apprentice.

At first, I would be trusted only to sew buttons and hems, but before long I was adept enough to be trusted with scissors and needles. I had taken pride in my skill; in the neat way I could fold and fit patterns to fabric with the least possible waste of materials. I loved the feel of the silks under my fingers as we worked side by side at the long table. A little stir, a little rustle, a little tapping of her scissors on the table where she sat sewing, her dark head, bent over a piece of sewing in her hand. She would look up, stretch her back and give me a smile.

In her pocketbook she always had a tidy sum saved.

Sometimes I feel her here in this room, hear  the clatter of the old sewing-machine, or  see her seated in one of those deep chairs, the lamplight shining over her shoulder on to a bit of sewing in her hand; so near that she could touch my cheek with her fingers.”

6 Chapter

Code Name ~ Le Lapin Blanc

Oroër, France 1938 

“You're crazy! Just let me ask you something, my son, how do you expect me to run this farm and the distillery without you?”  Phillipe LeBlanc waves a crumpled sheet of paper in the air and strikes the table with his fist. He shakes the gashed knuckles in the air. “You're CRAZY, I say!” His handsome profile is silhouetted against the light; he is lean and fit and stands erect. His prematurely graying hair is combed straight back from his forehead and heavy lines peek from the edges of a small mustache. One deep fold appears between his brows, but otherwise his face is smooth and unblemished.

The younger man throws back his head, looking up as if seeking God’s help. He has the same attitude, the same handsome look as his father, but in his expression, there is a difference. His lips are compressed continually into a frown absent from the father’s face. The boyish freshness is gone from his complexion and his mouth has settled into lines of sullen discontent.

 He veils his sad eyes under defensively lowered lids. “Maybe I AM crazy!” he cries, his eighteen-year-old’s voice breaking with the breath of newfound manhood bursting to get out. “Maybe I am, I’ve worked hard beside you for most of my life...and what have we got to show for it? Nothing but the promise of an early grave. Just sign the paper, Papa. I have made my decision.”

Phillipe stands a moment without speaking; eyes narrowed to two slits, his cheeks scarlet, his fist clenched. He glances at the enlistment papers, throws them onto the table, then looks away, towards the grounds, now bare after the harvest. His face remains grave and set as he stretches out his arm and points toward the field. “See those empty acres? They must be ploughed and planted and tended and harvested again and apples and pears must be picked.” He gives a cheerless and derisive laugh.  “Yes, you work like a slave preparing the ground and sowing seed; but the day you ought to be reaping the harvest you’re off flying airplanes.” He passes a hand over his hair ruefully and turns with a scowl. “Those flying lessons; they were a mistake. You have a certificate from d’Aviation Populaire saying you are a pilot and now you’re too important to work the land, to stay in our little village and help the family? You want me to sign a paper, to let you join the army? Young fool!  Do you think you can go join the military and the General will let you come home to help plant in the spring? No, of course not!”

Julian winces as his father pounds his bruised hand against the table a second time. His eyes catch movement in the corner of the kitchen. A little figure crouches there, listening—his twelve-year-old sister, Pauline. Making no sound she peers back at him, her luminous eyes glowing. A little tan and white terrier crouches against her leg, its head resting on her knee, its eyes alert.

Anne, who is used to finding herself in the role of peacekeeper between her head-strong husband and her spirited son, withdraws her hands from the dishwater and dries them on a towel. She sees on her son’s face a look, tenacious as a focused tomcat ready to pounce; she knows all too well this look means trouble. As she moves to a chair, she pauses to smooth Pauline’s braids.

She listens to the primal emotion in their voices as the two men squabble, knowing their stubborn rustic pride will result in an impasse, This both angers and amuses her. To interrupt them now before their aroused passions have worn away would be futile, so she waits patiently, for the calm to come, her fingers tapping the arm of her chair. Let them wear each other down. With a mother’s wisdom, she knows her task will be easier against a weakened opposition.

She feared this day was coming even before the seminal notion of leaving began to gnaw at her young son’s discontent. She saw his restlessness grow a little deeper each year. His occasional escapes looking for adventure in the nearby city of Beauvais no longer hold enough amusement to satisfy him. She knows all of this about her son. All four hundred inhabitants of Oroër know. That is the trouble with small villages, your life is so intimately interwoven with that of your neighbor; but there is something about a village that tries to hold you. It seduces you with its simple existence—so safe, so sane, so sure. Anne knows those temptations will no longer hold her son. They are the very things he wants to escape. He would never be content living in their village in the middle of nowhere; his restlessness, his impulses to find adventure in unknown places pulls at him. Knowing all the time that sooner or later she would have to let Julian go, she has prepared herself.

 Phillipe balls his hand into a tight fist. “You have a good job. Why would you leave it?”

It is true, the boy likes his job, knows it well, doesn’t even mind the drudgery of working in the automotive garage. Almost never separated from a monkey-wrench or pliers, he is always turning a nut or bolt in his grease-grimed fingers and is seldom seen without a good deal of grease beneath his nails and, generally, a smudge of black under one of his transparent blue eyes, or a swipe across a cheek. He can't spend a day with a piece of machinery without doing something to speed it up, or in some way improve it. He seems instinctively to know how engines work.

From the time he was a child nothing mechanical was safe from his investigating fingers. He took his first mechanical toy apart, piece by piece. "Tearing up your new toy? Wait till Papa comes home!" Mama had said, giving him a light swat and going on about her housework.

Surrounded by the toy's wreckage, Julian seemed undismayed.

Later, Ann had found the boy with the red-painted tin thing in his hand, good as new; he had merely taken it apart in order to put it together again, and he had been too absorbed to pause long enough to tell his mother so.

“Don't you see, Papa? There's nothing very magnificent in working in a garage, even if it is the best-paying garage in town.” He gives a quick glance toward his mother to gather strength from her. He knows she feels he was made for better things. “That isn’t my aspiration.”

A derisive expression crosses Phillipe’s face, “you walk on solid earth, but your head reaches up to the clouds.”

“No, Papa, you are the one with your head in the clouds. Another war is coming. It is clear France will be involved; France is always involved in war.

Julian had grown up in a victorious but bruised France during the clouded interval during which the Great War was not quite forgotten and the next one not yet feared. The thought of wartime excited him.  His father was decorated with the war cross and cited for bravery under fire during the Great War.

“You fought your war; it will soon be time for me to fight mine.”

“Yes, I fought mine. That is how I know....” He looks down, twisting the fingers of one hand in the fingers of the other. “There is no mystique to young men facing death.”

The black look on his face growing blacker, Phillipe turns to his wife. “Do you think this brings pleasure to your mama, to hear you talk of going to war? It isn’t enough, the things you do to break your Mama’s heart? Do you think your mama and papa have no understanding, haven’t seen death abundantly, seen hardship, and known hunger. Just you listen!  Because of war, I had no choice but to leave her here alone. She had to give birth to you, our child, while I recovered from wounds in a military hospital...and not for the first time. Now, you want her to watch her baby grow up to be killed in a war?”

He rises from his chair and stands gripping the table edge. “War changes many things. It is a startlingly, gory agonizing business to deal with. It changed me. It marks the soul, damages the heart. Bullets, shells, and bombs from morning until evening and from dusk to dawn, take their toll day by day. Gradually you forget that you ever knew the security of civilian life. Don’t deceive yourself. Your flesh might live, but your soul will die, the passion of your youth will be gone forever....”

Julian lowers his head so he doesn’t have to look into his mother’s eyes. He sits very still for a long minute, staring down at his hands folded in front of him, listening to his father’s rage. He does not feel the smallest wish to hurt his parents. He only desires to be out of the house and out of sight of the suffocating village.

“Well, if you don't like the way we live,” Phillipe snarls “if you don't like it, maybe you should get out, h'm? Why don't you get out?”

"Why, thanks. I guess I will."

Phillipe reaches out and slaps his son across the face. The noise cracks like a whip in the still room and suddenly his rage is gone, and he crumples into the chair by the table, his voice exhausted, his chin resting on his chest, gazing mournfully down at the pattern of the carpet.

The red mark of his father’s hand showing plainly on Julian’s fresh white cheek, he lifts his chair by the back and slams it down with a blow that almost shatters it.

The ruddy anger of his face fades to a dismal pallor. “Give me the paper; I will sign your death sentence.”

Julian walks out of the room with as much dignity as he can muster and bangs the heavy door behind him.

Pauline, still sitting in her spot on the floor, buries her head in her arms.

Marie rises from her chair and takes hold of her husband’s hand.

“I'm sorry,” he says simply, “really sorry.”

"He’s a little impulsive”. She smiled down, knowingly into her husband’s eyes.

“Don't worry,” she whispers between her kisses to his forehead, “your son has a good heart, he will not stay angry for long.”

7 Chapter

The Tailor

Grandvilliers, France 1938 

Bruno sits with his newspaper spread in front of him on the table. The headlines are disturbing. He’d started to have concerns over a year ago when Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland. Germany’s reoccupation of this area was in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, yet neither Paris nor London wanted to risk another war and so nothing was done. For more than four years Europe has tried to ignore Adolph Hitler’s aggressive efforts to re-arm Germany. Now Hitler and his Gestapo are putting people in prison for the crime of ridiculing the Führer. But what concerns Bruno most are the stories of secret meetings to discuss Hitler’s plans to acquire “living space” for the German people. If Hitler persisted, Britain and France could not continue business as usual much longer. They could no longer turn a blind eye to his actions.

Why is Germany, Bruno’s home for the first twelve years of his life, letting this little Austrian bastard get by with these things? Yes, the German economy was very badly hit by the Great Depression and political chaos and violence erupted. Bruno easily understood the great attraction the National Socialist German Workers' Party had for the people. President Hindenburg and his chancellors failed to lift Germany out of the depression. The Nazi Party’s promises of better pensions and increased employment appealed to the common man. Pledges to restore Germany’s standing in the world and Germans’ pride in their nation as well as end the depression coupled with campaign slogans such as “Work, Freedom, and Bread!” had great appeal to a proud and desperate people. But some of the people were slowly awaking to the magnitude of the thing that was happening.

For some time now Bruno himself had pondered what he deemed as his duty— to help do something about Lebensraum, Hitler’s justification for German expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. He knew that thinking about a problem won’t solve it. He also knew that war would come, and it might come suddenly.

He considered going to Vincennes and becoming a horse soldier, as his cousin, Gerard had done. But it was resignation to his family obligations that stopped him from pursuing those plans.

A recent visit to Dr. Demont had changed that. The visit had changed many things, altered his prospects in life, his state of mind.

Unable to read his newspaper with any degree of concentration, Bruno occasionally withdraws his glance from the newspaper and looks across the room to where his wife, Raymonde, in kimonoed comfort has draped her legs from the far end of the ruffled cushioned couch. Resting her back against a flower embroidered pillow, Raymonde holds her cigarette and thumbs through a fashion magazine.  She stubs out her cigarette and picks through a box of chocolates. Thanks to her mother’s deep connections in the black market, the Depression has had surprisingly little impact on Raymonde’s pleasures.

Bruno finishes reading the news accounts, briskly folds up the newspaper and slaps it down on the kitchen chair and rises with an exclamation of disgust.

Raymonde, without moving, stares at him dumbly, her eyes cold and emotionless, her lips tight. He could no longer face those eyes of hers every day.

Crossing the room to the fireplace Bruno bends to stir the smoldering fire with a rusty wrought-iron poker. He tosses a crumpled newspaper into the blaze and stands watching it burn, overcome with an alien feeling of not belonging in this place where he’d once found comfort. The house seems so different now. Everything is in its correct place but somehow the furniture seems dingy, the pictures on the wall one dimensional and the room smaller—cell-like. His face grows dark as memories pile up, disordered and mixed, their proper sequences and links lost.

The charred end of a log has fallen on the stones, and, picking it up, he throws it back into the flames sending a shower of fine sparks hovering into the air before they are sucked up by the big stone chimney. Heat from the fire burns on his cheeks. His face is grave; there is no hint of indecision on it. Without turning his face from the fire, he sees Raymonde in a side-glance.

“I leave for Vincennes tomorrow; I have enlisted in Le Corps de Cavalerie. My brother, Joseph will arrive to tend to the shop.”

He has made all the plans without the least intention of speaking about it to her until everything was altogether settled.

There is a little interval of silence, and then Raymonde gets up and takes a step forward, fixing her burning eyes on him. Her mouth is twisted with disgust. “I see you have taken off your wedding ring. Make no mistake, wedding ring or not, you are married, for better or for worse” she said. “Never forget that for a moment. You are duty-bound, hard and fast and tight.”

He turns slowly toward her and then looks away again, into the fire.

“I have to consider our marriage a failure. I am intolerably unhappy. I’m like a prisoner here, I don’t know what there is to hope for in life.”

“I've sacrificed myself for what I thought best," she said abrasively.

He drops the poker. It clatters on the brick hearth.

“Sacrificed!” echoed Bruno contemptuously and instead of looking up to her face, he gazes steadily down at the hem of her long red kimono.

“Dr. Demont told me of your unspeakable deception. The whole sordid story.”

“Ah, it’s better so. I've always feared a time would come when we should have to talk this thing out.” But it’s not too late,” she said, with her head held very high, “to rectify that mistake.”

Never until then has he known a hatred so intense, so pervasive.

How in Heavens’ name has it come to this? For a time, looking thoughtfully at the fire, he tries to remember.

It was 1923 when his stepfather stepped into their little house in Gelsenkirchen to tell mama, “we leave for France next week.”

“France?” she echoed and put down her sewing.

“Henri has secured good positions for us in the coal mines near Pas-de-Calais. There will be jobs in the mines for Bruno and Joseph as well. Many immigrants are going there to work in the mines. It’s a chance to get out of Germany.”

Bruno had been too young at the time to realize how debt amassed during The Great War had put Germany on the edge of economic collapse. France, on the other hand had made a swift recovery from damages suffered during the war and was flourishing Parisian culture was world-famous and expatriate artists, musicians and writers from across the globe flocked to France in search of liberation and artistic freedom.

Bruno rouses himself from these fragments of the past and stares hard at Raymonde.  She takes a bite out of a chocolate, eyes it critically, tucks it back into the box and stretching her arms high above her head, yawns elaborately. He turns from her in disgust.

How many years has it been since he picked up the newspaper from the sitting-room sofa and re-read the circled ad—the one seeking help in a tailor shop in Grandvilliers? It had seemed a good thing—quite perfect in fact. He was no longer needed at home, not with his two brothers and now his sister able to help Mama. He would be of more help if he could bring a paycheck from outside the family. So, he called the phone number in the newspaper.

If he’d known where it would all lead...would he have answered that ad?

When he arrived at the shop in Grandvilliers he stood outside looking at the door for a moment, gathering his courage. He straightened his necktie and smoothed his hair. He squared his shoulders, opened the door and stepped inside.

A comely, middle-aged buxom woman greeted him hospitably from behind the counter. He immediately noticed her crêpe mourning attire.

Bruno shook hands with her across the counter.

A child of about five years sat quietly playing with wooden blocks in the corner. The woman followed Bruno’s gaze toward the child.

“My grandson, Paul. My daughter has gone to make deliveries. The three of us, we live here together.”

“I am Madame Bouchard. You’re here about the position?”

He nodded. “Yes, Bruno Radziminski.” He held out a typed letter. “My references.”

She quickly glanced over the text and then peered over her glasses at him. “My husband had a good business here. Some wealthy clients. But that can change quickly.” She waved a hand in the direction of the cash register. “I know nothing of running the business. I need a right-hand helper—a steady person, someone I can trust, who'll answer questions, give advice.”

He stood as straight as a soldier throughout their conversation.

She looked him directly in the eye. “I have learned to judge people because I had to. I need someone who has that skill as well ...someone who can judge the customers, gauge their tastes, their dispositions, and their pocketbooks.” She took a deep breath. “You are unmarried?”

“Yes.”

“It’s important. I need someone here full time.”

Within days of that meeting, Bruno had moved into a tiny room at the back of the shop.

In the evenings he would climb the stairs to the third-floor apartment to share a bowl of soup with Madame, Raymonde and Paul. At first the dinner conversations centered around the business and the widow would turn to Bruno with their problems, and his advice was always solid. But night after night, conversation would turn to the virtues of Raymonde and after dinner the older woman would continue her lament started at the dinner table—the sad situation of her daughter—a woman past thirty with a sickly child. Madame would then maneuver the conversation and wag the ever-present temptation of Bruno being able to one day call the shop his own.

His interest in the business was genuine, and eventually, one night, Bruno looked into Madame’s serious face, grappled with an irresistible temptation and made a sign of assent. Bruno and the widow went on to negotiate the marriage in the old-fashioned manner and with the signing of the marriage papers there was also the signing of the documents giving ownership of the shop to Bruno. One might have accused him of manipulating it so; but they had become as a family and Bruno had grown genuinely comfortable within the little unit.

Their marriage had been entered into hastily with no pretense of romance— a negotiated business agreement. But he’d been taught to regard marriage as a duty. He and Raymonde had made a commitment before God, and Bruno had a dogged determination to carry through with it at any cost.

But recent events have him thinking of a way out of his obligations—a sudden realization the whole thing has been a ghastly mistake.

So much has changed in those few years since he opened the newspaper and found the ad. He is remembering none of the happy times, maybe there had been some, but he recalls only the bitter ones. Now, as he stares into the fire he thinks of many things—the look in Raymonde’s eyes that gives only disapproval and disappointment. And he thinks, too, of how she gives him no moral support—complains bitterly "You take no interest in anything but work."

But mostly he remembers the things Dr. Demont said to him on their last meeting. The doctor came into the room rubbing his hands together and doing nothing to conceal his profound concern. He took a seat in his big leather chair puffed at his cigarette in silence. He seemed to be thoughtfully considering his words between puffs. He sat in the cloud of smoke with his eyes cast down, and the slightest little tightening of his lips. 

There was nothing to say, so Bruno sat in suspense, watching the doctor send light puffs of smoke from between his lips.

Then pausing to adjust his tortoise-rimmed eyeglasses and clearing his throat Dr. Demont opened a Pandora’s box of tawdry lies and shattered Bruno’s world.

“I assumed you knew—assumed she had told you before your marriage.” The doctor raised his eyes to meet Bruno’s. “It is a contagious disease, syphillis. She was warned not to co-habitat— to abstain from relations until treated. The patient refused the treatment, was reluctant, afraid of the danger of arsenic poisoning...and the injection is horribly painful, the pain sometimes lasting for days. But I warned her against simply accepting the consequences....” He paused, leaving the sentence unfinished and peered at Bruno over the rims of his eyeglasses. A sadness lingered in his eyes.

Bruno considered what he had just heard. It began to dig its claws into his soul. His heart beat faster. His color came up, and then faded. This wasn’t a matter of trickery, but of out and out evil deception. The woman he is married to is a degenerate, with a lovely face. Looking up at the doctor he smiled—an ugly smile.

Then a curious thing happened. A feeling of relief came over him. Perhaps it is the best thing for him, after all. It would be so easy now. He slipped his wedding ring off his finger and placed it in the pocket of his vest.

His voice trembled slightly, and his face flushed, “Everything will be all right. You've given me the answer I wanted.” He smiled as though in apology for his show of emotion. “Oh! I don't know what I'm saying, Doctor. Good day.”

Bruno walked out of that little room and took every hope and ambition of his life with him.

8 Chapter

Code Name ~ Captain Jacques

Saint-Just-en-Chaussée, France 1939 

A clock strikes somewhere.

He starts, rouses himself. “What! can it be that late? Impossible, it must be fast!” Drawing a breath, George Jauneau raises his head and looks out the window. Seeing the darkness gathering, he quickly clears his workstation and hurries away, locking the door of the laboratory behind him.

As he rushes from the Weeks factory building, he meets no one; all the doors are shut and the stairs are deserted. This is not an unusual situation for George as he leaves work. Ever since the Parlement français had bowed to pressure from the workers and enacted a law limiting the work week to 40 hours, he is often the last to leave the building. The 33-year-old activist smirks at the irony. He had campaigned hard, alongside his father, in the Radical Socialist Party movement to get this enacted; nonetheless he enjoys his work as a chemical engineer, and he has no wife to hurry home to. But tonight, he has a soupçon of escape from his familiar solitude—a business meeting—communist business.

He walks out into the streets just as shop windows are beginning to glow. Picking his way to the bistro, preoccupied with many thoughts, he stops and stands motionless for a few moments, without being aware of it. The people who pass along the sidewalk, moving vaguely under the trees, are only shadows with muffled voices, silhouetted in the pale glow of streetlamp globes.

When he reaches the corner at the juncture of the sidewalk that leads to the door of the bistro, he stops again, “Ah, I wish I knew,” he whispers pensively. “I do wish I knew what she thinks of me.” He stands for more than a minute and with studied deliberation he critically views the reflection of his sharp features and high cheekbones in a café window.

He is fond of making fun of his own face, particularly his conspicuously aquiline nose, though, in truth, he seems proud of it, especially when he receives one of the frequent comparisons to the British actor, Basil Rathbone. “A regular Roman nose,” he would say, “I’ve the countenance of an ancient Roman patrician of the decadent period.” His prominent Adam’s apple would bob below his sharp chin, and his lips, as thin as two threads, would curl into an infrequent, crooked smile; that smile that seldom reaches his small, quick eyes, shining like two bright points. There is something suspicious, and ironical in those eyes; something which gives him an ominous and portentous appearance.

He passes a hand over his cheek and rubs the network of fine wrinkles around his eyes. “They make me look older than I am. Do I look as if I am her father?” He shrugs, picks an imaginary hair off his lapel and resumes his journey to the bistro.

The hammering of his heart builds as he pushes open the door, and after an instant's hesitation, enters the smoke-filled room, thick with the smell of perfume and perspiration. As expected, he finds it crowded with noisy customers laughing boisterously.

He turns sideways to work his way across the bare floors of the long, narrow room. Pushing through the crush, bumping into knots of people clustered here and there as he goes. He brushes past a group of students, a couple of smartly dressed women sipping glasses of wine, and a pair of low-voiced lovers whose coffee cups remain untouched on an iron-legged table topped with bare marble, yellowed with age and use. A sense of unreality wells inside. Years ago, it had been his habit to escape into the anonymity of a crowd such as this—souls with no real home life—living in the bistros, rendezvous with their friends to gossip and drink infinite bottles of wine. One can find these people in every bistro and café in every city. But he no longer looks for that kind of retreat.

Above the sound of the crowd he hears the voice of his friend, Jean Crouet, call his name. “Georges.” He waves. “Over here.”

Excitement colors his face and he moves toward the little group huddled around a table near the back wall. He feels an anxiety of his own creation and his color brightens more as he spots the reason he no longer seeks solitude—Paulette.

She is a rather ordinary girl of seventeen, simple and without airs, but when she takes on a cause her eyes fill with sparks of passion—and it seems she always has a cause.

He had first seen her almost a year ago, standing on a street corner in the afternoon light, handing out pamphlets advocating voting rights for women. From the curb, across the street, he had stood watching her intently. In her rather shabby outfit and with wisps of hair a little disarranged over her forehead she must have been aware of not looking her best. Clearly, she was not giving her appearance a thought.

He became suddenly aware that she had seen him, and each knew they had been seen and were watched by the other. When he caught her eye, a bashful smile came into her face. He smiled back, uncertainly and hustled away, as if caught red-handed in some misdemeanor.

But later in the solitude of his room, he relived every instant, every detail of the event. There was no special reason for it; she was not prettier than average, but he recalled her impassioned words, her eyes, her smile—and he envisioned their next meeting and imagined philosophical conversations and purposeful meetings with her.

He had never thought so persistently of any girl before. The girls he met were mostly superficial and seemed to find him shy, which he was, and dull, which he was not. He hoped this one might discover this and even though he had not stood near her, he was certain she did not smell of perfume.

 Afterwards, he found himself returning to that street corner, hoping for another glimpse of her, but it was not until a few months ago that he saw her again. That was when he found himself standing next to her at a meeting of the Front Populaire. He did not look at her, and yet, as the sense of her nearness spread through him, he was conscious that he had never been so close to her before. She did not smell of perfume. He wondered, was it possible that she, too, shared his nervousness? Thus, it all began unexpectedly when she had spoken first. Of course, he was greatly surprised, as it had all happened so quickly and unexpectedly. Later, she told him that the encounter had not happened by accident and admitted he made an extraordinary impression on her and she had inquired about him after their encounter on the street.

Now, as he reaches the table, he shakes his head and to no one in particular, says, “Yes, yes, you are right, I’m late, I am ashamed of it.”

He signals to the waiter and then exchanges la bise with everyone and pulls out an empty chair across the table from Paulette.

 Paulette is deep in an argument with Tristen, one of the engineers from the factory. This time it is about women’s rights. They seem always at odds, Paulette and Tristen. She, the traditional anti-militarism French-leftist and he, who focused on the urgency of the rising threat of Nazi Germany.

 Georges sees those sparks in Paulette’s eyes, when she suddenly loses her temper and flares up, “you represent all that is most detestable in la bourgeoisie.” Georges knows she has taken that line from an English novelist, but he has never called her on this. It is her usual condemnation of Tristen. Tristen, the socialist, supporter of the now defeated economic reformer, Prime Minister Léon Blum— Tristen, the perfect gentleman, poor Tristen!  But he is a worthy match for her in this debate—Paulette, the Soviet Marxist, follower of the anti-Stalinist, Leon Trotsky—angry because Blum had defended voting rights for women, but when he was in power, did not implement the measure.

Paulette looks Tristen straight in the eyes. “You’ve read nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing, except what is in the newspaper.” She is the only one at the table who has read Marx and Engles... that much is true...but it seems she has also read Virginia Woolf.

Tristen smiles at the exaggerated and intentional distortion of his words. A manager in the Chemical Engineering Department at Weeks, Tristen is accustomed to being respected. Confronted by this young girl, not much older than his daughter, he feels himself challenged by some test of fair-mindedness and logic, qualities which he admires. She has offered up a challenge Tristen can’t resist.

Their conversations often go this way. The group has grown used to it. Georges watches with a bemused expression as Tristen and Paulette sit side by side challenging each other.

Tristen, a pragmatist with cool judgment understands the difference between a perfect ideal and an attainable reality. “I regret to say you clearly have limited your reading to a narrow focus. Perhaps you could add a little more Dostoevsky and a little less Marx to your reading list. ‘Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.’ What do you think?” he raises his voice to be heard over the din. “You think I am attacking you for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like to hear nonsense. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man of science, an engineer. We know you never reach any truth without making a dozen—a hundred mistakes. Mistakes are necessary for progress in science, thought, invention.”

The waiter sets a café in front of Georges and disappears, ignoring the overflowing ashtray on the table.

Tristen sips his wine slowly, and when he has drained the glass, pauses to light another cigarette. He studies Paulette through the smoke while she fumbles in her purse and comes back with a cigarette. He reaches across the table and lights it. Her eyes shine in the glow of the match. She exhales. Her gaze follows the smoke. Before the battle begins, the horses paw the ground; toss their heads; their flanks shine; their necks curve.

With the lighted cigarette in his mouth, Tristen becomes suddenly thoughtful. Part of him regrets the need to break her spirit; he envies her youthful idealism. What the girl doesn’t realize is that he provokes her on purpose – testing her, broadening her focus, driven by the idea that her intellect should be trained. She needs more competition. It is perhaps too much or at least too simple to say that he enjoys the arguments; they offer a challenge and a reassurance, so that every debate he survives represents a personal victory. In Paulette Biefnot he had found a stimulating, energizing challenger; she could match him in assessment of a situation, both of speech and action. 

In silence, everyone around the table prepares to watch the battle.

Georges goes on drinking his café; Jean fills his wine glass. They prepare to take the role of Switzerland in this debate.

The silence is broken as Paulette fires the first volley with a lifting laugh in her voice. “You're just a naïve old man.”

This shrill talk bewilders Georges, drains him of his fire.  He doesn’t understand the appeal of the banter; he is not by nature a man of battle. But he is certainly fascinated by these debates, even finds them amusing at times. As they spar, he watches Paulette carefully. The color comes and goes in the girl's face and as he watches, he can’t help feeling attracted; her eyes so clear, such a kindliness and simplicity in her expression that one could not help being charmed.

Tristen rests his elbow on the table and leans his chin into his palm. An old man of 36!  Taking up her challenge he snorts. “It seems, as if by magic the youth and glow have faded from me and I have grown old in the last hour. But, my dear child, I am neither old nor naïve. Go on thinking you have the answers,” he retorts, amused. “Go on and think it. It'll do you good.”

“Of course, I'll think it.” Her eyes hold the confidence of youth. “Because it’s so.”

“Perhaps it is so in theory, in books of philosophers. But those thoughts must evolve to a reality. You must be able to think clearly and unemotionally; learn to discern the difference between theory and practical reality. Child, you are the one who is naïve if you persist with promoting your impossible ideals. The problem with you communist—your methods will cripple business.” Tristen’s face takes on a mocking expression. He takes a sip from his glass. “I don’t need to read Karl Marx to know that without employers there are no employees.”

She eyes Tristen through a dense curtain of cigarette smoke. “I fail to understand what good it is to have steady employment if the worker is exploited — poorly paid. Business is no more than a vast scheme for the organization and exploitation of labor.”

“Ah!” He pauses and rests his elbow on the table, looking her in the eyes. “The theories of your Herr Marx rose quite naturally from those early economists, like Adam Smith, who saw the world in terms of production and saving.  The problem is that Marxism springs directly from conception to expression without much thought as to human nature. I am a Socialist, Paulette. The concept of economic injustice is not foreign to me.”

“And what is a Socialist?” She laughs, “but a Communist without conviction. I am a Communist, an incurable Communist.” 

He laughed. “But when have you had time to become one? Why, you are only seventeen?”

She winced.

“I am at a complete loss to understand what my age has to do with it. The question is what are my convictions, not what is my age, isn't it?”

“When you are older, you'll understand for yourself the influence of age on convictions. I fancy, too, that you were not expressing your own ideas.” 

Her face lit with determined scorn. “You are missing the big picture, the greater goal of Leon Trotsky’s highly organized world-wide social order where all will be equal, and all will have property in common. That is our dream—a World State.”

“And that is all it is...a dream...and dreams are not reality. You are pursuing a phantom.”

Her face went red and her eyes were all pupil. “Oh; you’re wrong! It is a reasonable possibility. It can be achieved with a mixture of force and alluring persuasion. It is working in Russia—has been for a quarter of a century.”

He smiles again; only one so young would think twenty-five years is a test of time.

“Forced submission? You think it is okay to impose your beliefs on others?”

“If it is justifiable—yes. Society has the duty to right the exploitation of labor—to end economic injustice—by whatever means are necessary. People will get used to it. Everything is habit with men, everything even in their social and political relations. Habit is the great motivator.”

 “So, you think it is justifiable to intervene in the details of people’s lives if your cause is noble? It won’t work, it will be a failure, a complete failure. Human nature cannot be changed.” He laces his fingers to form a steeple and looks her directly in the eyes. “Excuse the natural unease of a man who sets great store in his freedom. Many a war has started over just such thinking. Tell me this, who gets to determine which is the justifiable cause? You? Me? But you see, we, don’t agree on what is important. How will we recognize these advocates of justice, these arbiters of equality? Perhaps the chosen could wear something, be branded in some way so we can recognize them? Could they adopt a special uniform, for instance?”

He is a bit envious, marveling that in her youthful mind she sees the possibility of replacing the most primal of human instincts.

Paulette looks at Tristen with a vague sense of apprehension. She smiles. She sees the point at once and knows where he wants to drive her and takes up the challenge.

“So, I see you now want to compare us with those people in Germany wearing their impressive uniforms? Hitler with his fancy emblems and pageantry and his threats and plans—so sure his is a noble cause.”

Tristen nods. “You know if confusion arises and a member of one group imagines that he belongs to the other, begins to eliminate obstacles, then what? Maybe you think that I am saying all this only to annoy you?”

She gazes at him through narrowed lids as he lights another cigarette and refills her wine glass. Despite her almost child-like look, and kindness of heart, she has fire in her spirit. “No, I don't think that ... though perhaps you have a little desire to do that, too.”

“Ah, perhaps a little.” His eyes flash in an amused awareness that she is a person to be reckoned with, and suddenly he becomes suspicious the pupil has surpassed the teacher. “Surrender?” he asks.

“Not really.”

He winks at her. She smiles and refills his glass.

Georges orders another café. “If you two are finished exercising your egos for a while,” he said, “maybe we can get down to business. We must talk about something that needs urgent attention.” His eyes swept over the faces in the room. The very crowding of the bar enabled the group to talk as if alone.

President of the local union of engineers and technicians, Georges has naturally emerged as the leader of the group. He always listens intently and gives himself completely to the other person. That is one reason why people turn to him as they do. 

There is no detouring with him for a leader. Once he is set toward a goal, he looks neither right nor left until he has reached it. His father, a schoolteacher and librarian, had introduced his mind, at an early age, to the works of Voltaire and other free thinkers. Vigorous in his opinions, his ideals are formed only after much thought, but once formed his single-mindedness is strong. Influenced politically by the writings of many leading French intellectuals in the socialist underground newspaper L’Humanité, his views have now moved to the left of his own Radical Socialist Party.

“France has the only major Communist party in western Europe that is still legal. If we want to remain that way, we must devise a plan.” He looks at Tristen, and then at Jean. “Even our freedom loving Socialist friends know it is dangerous to suppress free thinking. Hitler...whatever title you give him, his goal is to take our freedom from us. Everyone at this table knows the Munich Agreement is nothing more than a futile attempt at appeasing Hitler’s expansionist totalitarian state.”

He continues in that vein till the cup of coffee arrives.  He hesitates.

Jean orders another bottle of wine. The waiter nods and vanishes.

Georges has known for months that this moment must come. The debates between Tristen and Paulette have opened his eyes to splits within the left-wing parties. Splits that must be mended if the Nazi’s are to be stopped.

“What good are these philosophical arguments if they divide us in our fight against Hitler and his Nazi’s? We need unity and alliances within the parties— not divisive labels and polarizing arguments.”

 The waiter reappears with a bottle that is a twin to the one they had just emptied. Georges again pauses until the waiter has gone. He knows that those gathered around the table seeming to listen with respectful attention, really hear very little of what he has to say. Each has his own opinion and needs no one to confirm it. But he needs to get across only one point—they have a common enemy.

“This is not the time for dogmatic debates. Marxist imposed struggle between the working class and the middle-class opens the door to the German Fascists.”

They all knew he was speaking the truth.

From the corner of his eye Georges sees two men hunched over a table at the other side of the narrow room. He recognizes one; he has the face of a man perpetually on guard.

 Georges sets down his half-empty cup and reaches for a cigarette. He catches Jean’s eye and shoots him a look of surprise as the two men pass close to their table.

“I do not think he noticed us.  If he did, he gave no sign as he went out.” 

“I couldn't place that man with him; one of the union crowd, maybe?”

“An agitator?” Jean asked.

“Well,” Georges smiled tolerantly, “personally I don’t like to use that word.”

He lets the subject drop when he notices the waiter hovering near-by. Throwing a hostile sidelong glance toward the waiter; he scowls and stands to leave. “Let’s get to it then.”

9 Chapter

Code Name ~ Le Lapin Blanc

Oroër, France, Nov 1938 

Julian lay awake, pounding his pillow all night long. He shifted and twisted lost in thought and excitement as the cool sheets turned hot. Visualizing what lay ahead for his next three years in the Air Force, a thousand sensations swept through him. The voice of adventure had been seductive in its never-ceasing invitation. But now, at last, he was headed for his training. Tomorrow he would catch the first train out of Beauvais and report to Air Battalion 113 at Rochefort-sur-Mer air base. As a second class soldier he would train as an airplane mechanic.

The pent-up feelings and emotions of these past months were finding an outlet; his longings were straining, the thrill of embarking upon discovery was looming. With his thoughts and emotions hanging scattered in confusion his reactions shifted from thoughts of exciting activity and danger to a clamoring murmur, a tangled maze of contradictory notions that he had made a terrible mistake. So, he lay there worrying. What if he wasn’t good enough? What if he missed his train? What if Papa was right?... he was usually right.

But among the conflicting sensations which assailed him, there was neither sorrow nor regret about his decision. There was, perhaps a dull pang of guilt over the argument with his father and of all the emotions revived and reviving in his heart because of it. With one arm tossed up over his head, in the middle of composing a letter to his father which he would not write the next morning, he fell asleep.

He was not asleep for very long before the panes of his window turned from black to grey and he vaulted out of bed. His clothes were folded in a neat pile in a chair. He put them on and stood before a mirror brushing his hair and shaving the fine whiskers from his unsoldierly teenaged face.

In almost no time flat he had breakfast of coffee and baguette, placed his beret on his head at what he considered a debonair angle, and was on his way, peddling his bicycle along the dark and silent streets. Not another soul was in sight; morning sleet filmed the street and the cold wind colored his cheeks. In half an hour’s time, he reached the train station.

As he waited on the wooden bench for the train to pull into the station, he found himself thinking of all that would transform him from Julian LeBlanc the civilian to —Julian LeBlanc, second class soldier in Armée de l'Air. 

§

The wind grew colder as it lifted and blew misty rain across the faces of a sparse and shivering group of soon-to-be soldiers waiting outside the barracks with bubbling spirits and in great anticipation. Some were tall good-looking fellows, others small, skinny and looked a trifle undernourished. Many had a sturdy look; their stride as if walking behind a plough, their clothes smelling strongly of the stable.

Going on all around them was a pageant of activity too exciting, too interesting to ignore...people hurrying one way or the other. Julian, watching fascinated, took in everything—the faces—the platoons marching in and out— orders being shouted; his eyes were full and brimming over—he could stare all day long. He left behind the uneasy boy who had tossed and turned in apprehension the night before. Amid the action he studied those who appeared to be leaders— took note of their mannerisms, their attitudes towards others, the way they carried themselves.

Overhead, gray snow clouds veiled the pale-yellow November sun. A few moments later light flurries of snow began to fall, the big wet flakes melting as soon as they touched the earth where they changed to nasty puddles of sticky mud.

With a bang, the big doors of the building swung open. Exhibiting great military bearing, out strode an imperious-looking fellow with two orange chevrons on his sleeve. The little peacock of a man directed the group inside. For a breathless instant Julian wavered; then turning squarely, gave a last look around and fell in line.

At the moment they entered the large room they were greeted by its only ornamental accessory, a photograph of Prime Minister Édouard Daladier. The frame was handsome, but somewhat battered; it had seen long service. However, the photograph was quite new.

Hovering everywhere in the chilled air there seemed to be the faint deeply dank scent of disinfectant blended into the stale and musty odor of antiquity; the two becoming one. In his mind, Julian would forever link that stench with this day. He could see the arched curve of the dilating nostrils of the man breathing at his shoulder. His breath came a little quickly, like a man who wants dreadfully to sneeze, but can’t.

The room was empty but for some wooden benches, a long table, and a smoking, rusty stove in the corner that warmed the room unremarkably. A very curly-headed man with a reddened face, knelt beside the inadequate little stove poking at the flames. Behind the table were two empty wooden chairs; a clerk sat in the third. There was no sound except the rustle of papers and the shuffling footsteps of the recruits. The clerk met their questioning looks with indifferent eyes and continued to sort his papers.

The peacock pointed toward the row of benches, looking at the recruits with a condescending smile of triumph, and at the same time with a certain compassion, as if to say: “...and, how do you feel about it now?” He seated himself in the chair beside the clerk and ran a finger through the sheaf of papers in front of him. Rising from his knees the third man stood, drew up the remaining chair at the table and immediately took charge of the proceedings.

From where Julian sat, he could look into the next room; could see the counter where recruits would be issued all the gear necessary in their new way of life. He glanced up repeatedly at the quartermaster, partly because the latter stared persistently at him. A man over fifty, bald and grizzled, of medium height, and stoutly built, his intense dark eyes gleamed from swollen eyelids. The old sergeant wrote in a notebook with his pencil. From time to time letting his elbow rest dejectedly on the counter as though having been through this many times before; now weary of the young novices, he showed a shade of condescending contempt for them as persons of station inferior to his own. Despite all this, there was something very respectable and official- like about his manner.

After the clerks called each of the recruits to the table and completed the formalities, the group moved as a unit to the quartermaster’s counter, once again forming a long line to wait for the fire of sarcastic comments accompanied by  the command, "Now, then, you! Step up!"

Before long, the heavy tramping of boots across the rough plank floor told of the arrival of Sergeant Dupont. For a few moments, the tattooed, hairy-armed, gorilla with a rough and battered countenance, stood in the middle of the room, musing; looking slowly about, he cast a glance at each man. Then, making a clicking sound of impatient disapproval with his tongue he half-cough and let out a low-voiced, ominous, "Well-well-well."

With their arms heaped with uniforms and steel helmets plopped awkwardly on their heads they slogged through the thick, viscous mud in cadence with the sergeant’s raspy interminable "Left! Right! Left! Right!” They marched to the long wooden barracks, where they would begin a painful transformation from a homogeneous assembly of individuals, to newly fledged and still imperfect airmen and finally a functioning unit.

If there was doubt in the minds of any of them as to their rawness, it would quickly be dispelled by Dupont.

10 Chapter

The Tailor

Beauvais, France 1994

The young woman watches the aging tailor walk to the window and stand looking down onto the street below. She has become familiar with these moments of respite. Moments when he seems to be gathering his thoughts. She waits. The steady tick of the mantel clock punctuates the silence.

“As I told you, in 1938, I went to Vincennes and joined Le Corps de Cavalerie. It was my duty; I could sit a horse and fire a gun. I knew war was coming but wasn't the least afraid; such a fool. I had a romantic vision of myself—a cuirassier on horse-back—the buttons on my Napoleonic style uniform sparkling in the sunlight, a horsehair tail streaming from my helmet ; just like the pictures I had seen of the WWI Corps de Cavalerie.” He gives a little chuckle. “Ah, the fantasies of youth.”

A pigeon perches himself on the ledge outside the window. The tailor stops talking and watches until the bird flutters away. “As it was, the French calvary was mechanized in 1936. But at the onset of World War II, France mobilized over half a million horses. Dragoons were armed with carbines and sabers, antitank rifles and other modern warfare. On horseback we could maneuver into areas the tanks could never go.” The woman notices a slight twinkle in his eye.

He turns away from the window, switches on a lamp, shakes his head and turns to face the woman squarely.

“War came in September of 1939. It was Hitler’s invasion of Poland—the breaking point for France and Britain to declare war—but of course, you already know this.”

Returning to his chair, he leans a little forward, his eyes on the ground and his hands hanging listlessly between his knees. She hears his heavy breathing as he resumes his story.

“By 1940 Le Corps de Cavalerie was blended into a mechanized regiment, the 13th Dragoon Régiment. I said goodbye to my horse and was given a fine Hotchkiss tank”. He laughs again, this time louder and with a bit of whimsy. “Poland sill had an active calvary—perhaps I should have joined the Polish army—but then I would be telling you a different story.”

She became aware that he had lapsed into a rather prolonged silence and looked for a chance to bring him back to the conversation. “Fall of 1939, was that what they called the phoney war?”

“Yes, the phoney war and the song that so dismally suited it--the one about hanging out the washing on the Siegfried Line.

“Those first few months were stagnant, no signs of anything happening other than the R.A.F. dropping leaflets into German cities telling the people to give up. Civilians were carrying on their lives just as in peace-time. Oh, there were a few symbolic gestures of false preparedness... the portable boxed gas-mask, a preposterous, never used nuisance. In London and Paris, people sent their children to the country as soon as war was declared. But for the most part everyone was still trying to appease Hitler—hoping he would be satisfied with his current conquests and leave the rest of us in peace.”

He picks up a blackened brier-root pipe from the table next to his elbow. “Would you object if I were to light my pipe?”

“Please, help yourself.”

He takes his time as he packs tobacco into the bowl with his forefinger. There is no sound in the little room except the purr-purring of his pipe as he draws pensively on the stem. He waves the match to extinguish it and exhales a long smoke-filled breath.

“From the newspapers that we were able to get, it appeared that things were heating up on the front line. But we weren’t unduly worried. Everyone seemed to think things would continue much as they did in 1916. At Verdun, France had measured itself against the full power of the German Army for ten long and bloody months... and had won. Verdun emerged as the symbol of ultimate glory, but it was the longest and most terrible struggle of that war, and it had belonged solely to France. In the Great War all of Europe had relied on France to bear the brunt of the fighting on the Western Front; now the faith of all of Europe was in the Maginot line being able to hold back Hitler. The French were confident that the Maginot line was impregnable.”

“But can you tell me, why it was that the line ended at the Belgium border?

For all its might, didn’t that make it effectively useless?”

“The line didn’t end there, but from the Belgian border to the English Channel it was much weaker.”

“But why? If the fully fortified Maginot Line had been built all along the French-Belgium border, the outcome in the spring of 1940 may have been very different. Didn’t the leaders see that Hitler would go right around the Maginot, and enter France?”

“There were many reasons I cannot explain, but a couple I can—a political and psychological aspect.” He leans back in his chair and crosses his legs. “To fortify the Franco-Belgian border was politically unacceptable because to do so would ignore Belgium's neutrality. It could be taken to suggest that France either expected Belgium to side with the Germans or that they weren't prepared to help defend against the Germans.” He reflected a moment; relit his pipe and held the match until it was dangerously close to his fingers; tossed the still burning match into an ashtray and drew on the pipe.

“But,” the girl said slowly, “I—they knew the Germans violated the neutrality of Belgium in World War I. So, what would stop them from invading France through that country in 1940 just as they had in 1914?”

“Yes, yes. History has proven that to be true, hasn’t it? But there was a back-up plan, which also proved to be in error. It was incorrectly assumed that the Forest of Ardennes would act as a natural continuation of the man-made line; that it was impenetrable by tanks, especially because they would have to cross a major river where all the bridges were destroyed.” He takes his pipe from his mouth and leans forward with his elbow on the arm of his chair. “Suddenly in the middle of May 1940 there was an obvious turn. The Germans crossed the rivers especially quickly by deploying pontoons strung along cables to transport their tanks over river crossings. The Germans swept through north-central France, in a circular movement that took them rapidly down to Abbeville and to the coast just north of Rouen and the channel ports. Holland surrendered. Belgium surrendered. And Le Corps de Cavalerie was sent to the Belgian border. So ended the phoney war for me— from there our war began in earnest. The German Army captured Paris and conquered France in six weeks.”

11 Chapter

Code Name ~ Captain Jacques

Saint-Just-en-Chaussée, France September 27, 1939

Georges Juneau paces the room. From time to time he stops to light a cigarette. He stands a moment, reflectively looking out the window and through the smoke studies the street below. Nearby, on the littered desk, a folded newspaper is tossed beside a forgotten sandwich slowly growing soggy on a clean frayed napkin. It is long past the lunch hour.

He re-crosses the room, moves a cup of cold coffee and picks up the newspaper L'Humanité. He re-reads the few lines of bold black print. Since August, when the French government banned the communist run newspapers, L'Humanité has been published clandestinely. And since that decree, Georges has known more was coming. His engineer’s mind saw it as a simple arithmetic progression, 1+1 always equals 2 but this latest news is still a blow.

Since the ban, Georges and his friends have spent long lunchtimes at the bistro and have been meeting with great frequency—evenings and Saturdays—trying to learn what was really happening. It is a time when being a known communist means one looks suspiciously at anyone in authority secretly measuring the other and aware of a distance between them. Now, with this new event, those meetings would become more dangerous—more desperate—and more important.

Georges takes a long drag off his cigarette and opens his desk drawer. He returns the newspaper to its hiding-place under a file, grabs his hat, then hurries down the stairs and into the street stealthily closing the door behind him. The weather is quite mild, but he turns up his collar and draws his hat over his eyes.

Looking down at his feet as he walks the few blocks to the bistro, he tries to think things out. At the last few meetings Paulette and Tristen had called a truce, put aside philosophical debates. There was no longer time to engage in discussions of theories and dogma. There were very serious matters to decide. Immediate action and possibly the necessity to make great sacrifices were required.

When he opens the front door and steps into the bistro, the first look pains him. The place is almost empty. The openness exposes him; he prefers the special anonymity of a crowd.

He places his hat and coat on the rack and finds a table in the corner. Francois, the proprietor looks his way with a question on his face. Georges raises three fingers. A moment later he sees Paulette outside the window, cycling up. She leans her bicycle against the wall and enters. Georges catches Francois's eye and signals for one more coffee. Francois nods. Georges rises to greet Paulette. Before they are seated, Tristen and Jean come through the door, their faces anxious.

Tristen starts to speak but Georges waves him off, throwing a glance toward the approaching waiter, a soft heavy man, his feet pressing the floor soundlessly, his white apron floats over a generous belly. The stubble-faced man serves the coffees and moves away as silently as a predator. Tristen laughs disdainfully. “Probably he's eaves dropping anyway. But what difference does it make? Everyone knows who we are, what we talk about. Let him hear! Let anybody hear that wants to!”

Juneau stirs crystals of sugar into the blackness of his coffee. “Of course, they know but we must be careful; that little pest can be dangerous...and these new developments require additional precautions. The most powerful section of the Party outside of Soviet Russia has just ceased to exist! Do you understand what that truly means? The French communist were the largest organized force in Europe.” He studies Tristen for a moment, then continues, “Our party leaders are going into hiding for fear of being taken to execution.”

“Well, Georges... this is hardly a surprise... are you surprised? The need for action by the government has been evident for weeks. What did you expect?  Daladier had to respond ...what choice did he have...the people are up in arms. You heard his speech...read it in the newspapers... his warning about madmen who rule in Berlin, seeking a world of masters and slaves.”

“Of course, our Intelligence has been intercepting it all—they're not fools,” Georges says with his dry deliberateness.  He waves his hand in a diplomatic gesture, indicating his intention to remain silent. There is no need to discuss a point they all agree on.

“Come, that’s enough, let's go easy,” Paulette says persuasively, pushing her chair closer to the table an lowering her voice. “Of course, we all knew. We knew the moment Stalin aligned himself with Hitler, signing that Pact. The French Prime Minister can’t just ignore an agreement between the leader of the largest Communist country outside of the Soviet Union and the Fascist Nazi’s. I blame Stalin. Not Daladier. Our party can hardly condemn Stalin, but Daladier can’t turn his head to the fact that the communist have gone to bed with the Fascists. The leaders of our party are stuck in the middle. It is a very troublesome dilemma hanging like the sword of Damocles above their heads!”

Georges remains silent, lights a cigarette, sits back and watches; his eyes fixed steadfastly on Paulette as she continues. “There is no sense; Hitler suppressed the German branch of the party six years ago, and now signs a Pact with the Soviet Russians! Stalin thinks Hitler can be trusted? What a fool! A pretty marriage this is. It will last only as long as it suits the needs of the Führer.”

“Paulette is right.” Jean leans his arms on the table. “Probably, in Hitler's mind, the Russo-German Pact represents no more than an adjustment of his time-table. There is no end to what he will consider plenty of "living room" for the German people. It is the unchanging dream of the maniac and not likely to be affected by the proposals of politicians. Stalin has thoroughly infused his secret police and informers into the party; he is killing the vision of Lenin and Trotsky. His actions will destroy what is left of the Comintern.

Tristen takes a short black pipe from between his lips and peers through a haze of smoke. On his face is the look of one who is thoughtfully considering his words. “I do not pretend to understand all that goes into the decisions made by your Communist leaders, but it is clear to an outsider that the movement speaks with too many voices.” He pauses rubbing his thumb over the smooth bowl of the pipe, as if waiting for someone to object to his words. “At first the PCF voiced its commitment to defense of France against the Fascist; but after the Comintern declared the war to be 'imperialist'—merely another struggle between national ruling classes, the French Party did an about face. The motion of his thumb against the smooth pipe bowl stops and he looks down, as if embarrassed to meet the eyes if his friends with the honesty of his words. “How can you justify your PCF members of Parliament signing a letter agreeing with Hitler’s peace proposals? How can you justify L'Humanité advocating against French military preparedness and resistance to German invasion?” He squares himself about in his chair and looks up slowly and then flares in sudden fury. “What kind of madness is that? You go too far! We are supposed to just sit back and welcome Hitler into our country?” His pipe goes out slowly; he lays it aside, into a saucer on the table, so he can emphasize his remarks with gestures. “ Your party claims the war is not one of democracy versus fascism, but a war between imperialist powers ... a struggle against capitalism—the source of all wars—against the regime of bourgeois dictatorship in all its forms, especially in our own country...and you wonder why the government bans the communist Party and shuts down your newspapers calling for anarchy? Really?” The light flashes against his eyeglasses as he takes them off and rubs the ridge they have drawn across his nose. “Your leaders denounce war but at the same time refuse to denounce Stalin for entering an agreement with Hitler. Your Party doesn’t support what the Nazis stand for but refuses to denounce the treaty between Moscow and Berlin.” He repositions his glasses on his nose and meets Paulette’s eyes, his gaze full of icy cold anger. “Maybe we need to stop worrying about how to save your precious communist party and be more sympathetic to keeping France out of the hands of the Nazis. The paradox of the communist movement in France is its ability to merge attachment to the French nation with fervent loyalty to the Soviet Union and Stalinist practices.”

Tristin starts to say something else, but Georges waves his hand. He has reached his limit of endurance. “Enough about what we already know. Yes, our publications have been banned—banned, but not silenced. The Party has been outlawed, our leaders going into hiding—leaving the country to avoid being arrested for denouncing the war efforts. There are whispers and rumors that Maurice Thorez will have his citizenship revoked and will be drafted into the army. But our party members haven’t lost their passion for the cause. Even if the rage of our storm has to, for a time, be thrust into the background of our thoughts, we’ll not roll over and play dead.” Georges shook his head and then nodded toward Tristen. “He’s right.  The movement speaks with too many voices. There’s no merit in debating the reasons, regardless of the cause, it is nonetheless disastrous to us. When Thorez helped form the Popular Front, the French far left was in disarray; some even accused the French Trotskyists of being petty middle-class conformist, social democrats —not communist. Thorez had a vision of an alliance between all the left-wing movements—communists, socialists, radicals; he hoped we could unite under our common goals. And that was my hope when I steered the anti-fascist committee of Saint-Just-en-Chaussée at the time of the coalition. But with a last bitter spurt of spirit the Popular Front collapsed a year ago because of too many internal disagreements. We couldn’t find common ground. Each faction held a prized belief they were not willing to push aside for the common good... let’s not again fall into that trap.

Paulette looks as if she will jump to her feet. “But,” she plunges in, “compromise—it’s nothing more than giving in— by inches. Surely you know that. The enormity of the struggle between enterprise and labor— the farmers and tradesmen struggling against the subjugation of trade and finance—these aren’t issues of party and patriotism, they are realities of people’s lives. Whatever anybody says, it means a hell of a lot to many people. It’s the death of their hope if we give in an inch.”

Jean pushes aside his empty cup and reaches for a cigarette. “No, Paulette, it’s the end if we don’t. You are correct; much is at stake and it might be wise to make a few concessions. Do you not realize those who oppose your views are just as convinced of their opinions as you are of yours?” Jean sits a moment without speaking, giving her time to process his comments.  “Georges just remind us of what happened— the consequences of being inflexible.  Where will it end?  One side or the other has got to give in.”

 Paulette drums with her fingers all the time he speaks.

 The tired lines of Georges face that had relaxed a little over the coffee and cigarettes, sharpen again. He sees that any further discussion of this issue will bog down in the rancor of a philosophical impasse. He must redirect the conversation or lose his audience. He turns to Paulette with sympathy in his eyes. “Sometimes you have to wait for the right time to fight for things that matter in this world.”

“Meaning . . . me?”

“Yes, meaning you.”  He reached for her hand.  “It's been a fight all the way for both of us and I'm not giving up on our cause. I know what we’re up against.”

She tries to smile, but without much success and looks away, over towards the window.

His face remains grave and set. “Paulette, we are not putting aside our passions, we are merely placing our focus elsewhere, temporarily. Hitler is a newer and more urgent issue than capitalism.” His eyes follow her gaze. “See those sparrows over there picking up a crumb here and another one there?  That's how it is.  They just have to pick up what they can, and eventually they are satisfied.”

“You don't fight fair,” she smiled forgivingly at him and gave his hand a squeeze.

12 Chapter

Code Name ~Le Lapin Blanc

Royan, France, May 1940

The sergeant frowns and draws away his wrench. "Hey, boy! Come here and take a look at this engine, will you? She’s not hitting right, but I can't figure out what's got into her."

Julian crawls from beneath a Morane-Saulnier fighter, rubs his grease-grimed hands on his spattered coveralls and puts his ear to the heart of the plane and listens to the irregular throb of the engine. The look in his clear eyes is that of a doctor with a stethoscope counting pulse-beats. He takes the wrench, adjusts a screw, tightens a nut...the engine bursts into a staccato thunder; she is hitting all right now. He hands the wrench back to the sergeant, drops to the dirty mat that separates him from the tarmac and disappears beneath the plane once again.

It has been almost six months since he earned his second stripe, becoming a Corporal at the age of nineteen. This is his fifth week at the Royan Champlain auxiliary school of mechanics. When the talk turned to war, he submitted his request for a transfer to pilot training. Then Great Britain and France jointly declared war on Germany in September; surely his civil pilots license would have a positive influence on his request. But instead he found himself, rather to his astonishment, at Royan in a crew of oily smudge-faced, engine-wise young men in coveralls.

He is rather bored, though he doesn't know it. In his boredom he grows restless. It’s true that the thing that most fascinates his mechanism-loving mind is an engine; he can tinker happily with one for hours, but he has something more than a knack at things mechanical. He is full of determination, has ambition and a fierce sort of pride.

For eight months, beginning with the declaration of war on 3 September 1939, the days dragged slowly along. Julien has done his work with the gloomy detachment which has become his attitude toward life in general.

The Phoney War—Drôle de Guerre—Sitzkrieg.

It has been a war of newspaper articles and propaganda. Great Britain dropped leaflets onto German cities instead of bombs. The message was look at us—we absolutely have the potential to drop devastation on you. The message received by Germany—these are the anti-aircraft barriers that need improving.

Britain moved troops into France, while German, British and French troops faced each other over the Maginot Line but little more happened. But, just as Europe becomes complacent about a vague, elusive war... Germany invades Norway and Denmark...the situation turns to chaos....

 ***

“The Major will see you now.” Major Michel Duval’s clerk is a spare, middle-aged, confident-looking sergeant in spectacles. Duval has been a long time about it after calling Julian to his office, but he feels no resentment as he sits in the outer office. This heel-cooling experience isn’t new to Corporal LeBlanc. It is a skill he has perfected in the year since joining Le Armée de l'Air.

As he sits there, waiting, he gets a distinct impression of the unseen man whose voice is muffled by the thin door as he talks over the telephone in his inner office. It is characteristic of Duval that his personality reaches out and touches you before you come into actual contact with the man. Julian had heard tales of him long before this meeting. He is the genie in the lamp. When Julian turned in his request for reassignment to his sergeant the reply was, “You'll have to see the Major about that.”

It was eleven o'clock when Julian came into the outer office. The very atmosphere of the room was electrically charged with the high voltage of the man in the inner office.

The low-pitched, high-powered voice goes on inside. Duval is the kind of man who is always talking to Paris when he is in Royan, and to Royan when he is in Paris.

It is half past when the trim sergeant announces, “the Major will see you now.”

Julian is aware of a little tingle of nerves. He passes through the open door.

The major is not writing at his desk as Julian comes in. He is not telephoning. He is not doing anything but standing at his desk, waiting for Julian. It is Major Duval’s habit to give the task at hand his full attention. His eyes meet Julian’s squarely as Julian raises his hand in a smart salute. The major returns the salute. In obedience to Duval’s gesture, Julian seats himself in a chair opposite him.

Major Duval sits back in his chair. A great-bodied man, with powerful square shoulders and a chiseled crest of a nose. A man of forty, perhaps.

 He wears eyeglasses, the rimless kind with gold ear pieces. They give a certain humanity to a face that otherwise would have been too rugged, too strong. He speaks first. “You're younger than I thought.”

 “Old inside, Sir.”

He leans forward, folds his arms on the desk. “You're a student mechanic, Corporal?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“...and you want to be a pilot.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Michel Duval smiles for the first time. “Then it’s too bad you're such a good mechanic.”

“I'm not that good, Sir.”

“That's a thing that can't be argued, son.” He pauses a moment. “Do you think that this opportunity to come to Royan for advanced training is just a piece of luck?”

“Yes, Sir...I mean no, Sir. I don’t know, Sir.”

“It wasn't. You were carefully picked by me, and I don't expect to find I've made a mistake.” Julian waits for the officer to continue. “I know your history, your training. You're young; you're ambitious, you're experienced; you're imaginative. There's no length you can't go, with these skills. It just depends on how farsighted your mental vision is.”

Duval pauses to light a cigarette and shifts his weight in his chair. “It’s like this, France has a few more than a thousand combat-ready planes. So, how many pilots do you think we need to fly those planes?”

“Sir, I don’t know, Sir. I would guess a thousand?”

“France has prepared to fight the same way we did in the Great War...we won. So, we make do with our old planes.  But the technology of war has changed. We are fighting a different Germany this time...we are fighting the Luftwaffe. The Maginot Line will protect us from German Panzer’s but not from the Heinkels and Messerschmitts. The value of the Armée de l’Air depends on keeping combat-ready planes flying and putting more planes in the air. Machine guns must be calibrated, bomb-sights installed.”

Julian sees the futility of discussing this question. He can almost hear that mind working, the pistons moving up and down.

“What do you think we need to make that happen, Corporal LeBlanc?”

“Good mechanics, Sir.”

“And how many mechanics do you think we need?”

“Many, Sir.”

“So where do you have the most value to France, Corporal?”

“As a mechanic, Sir.” Julian tries not to show disappointment.

“Good! Would it be a smart move on my part to give up one of the best mechanic’s I have and turn him into a target in the cross-hairs of a Henkle pilot?” He eyes Julian coolly. “No need to answer that.” He stops. “Or perhaps you should, after all. I forget how young you are.”

He crushes his cigarette in an ashtray piled with a little heap of yellow cigarette stubs. “Now listen, Corporal: I'm not going to make promises. France is trying to buy high-performance aircraft from the United States. More planes will of course necessitate more pilots. New planes will need fewer mechanics. It seems simple enough—in a month, or six months or a year... Or never.” His tone is kindly, but not hopeful.

Michel Duval stands. “Cheer up. If the war last long enough, you may get the chance to be a target after all.”

Julian stands, his mental eye on the door. But now he turns to face the major squarely. “Sir, thank you, Sir.” He gives a sharp salute.

The major returns the salute and nods pleasantly.  The corporal leaves the room.

***

Julien's conversation with Duval returned to him within days. Horror and shock and fear came in less than a week when, to the surprise of everyone, the Germans smashed through Holland and Belgium. Then going around the Maginot line, Hitler sent his tanks through Belgium and entered the Ardennes Forest on the French border.

... as though everything had been completely transported from one state to another, equally affecting all the senses; no longer what it had been a moment before, the Phoney War officially ended on 10 May 1940 when those tanks crossed into France.

13 Chapter

The Tailor

Lille, France May 31, 1940

 A picture of the chaos they’re leaving behind in Lille flashes across his mind. The scene works like madness on his order-loving mind—his need to have all the pieces in their proper place—a lack of structure has always disturbed Bruno. Each battle lost brings the Germans closer to the door of Paris.

Since May 28, Bruno and Emile, along with other soldiers of the French First Army at Lille, have been fighting four German infantry divisions and three panzer divisions. It is an uneven fight and the best they can hope for is a few days delay. But that is the mission isn’t it? — execute a delaying battle, distract the Germans from reaching Dunkerque while allowing more Allied troops to retreat to the port for evacuation to safety in England. Every division they could hold off would be one less division to harass the British Expeditionary Forces heading for the coast.

The French Army fought from house to house in the suburbs of Lille. As the days wore on, they ran out of food and gasoline and ammunition.

At last, came new orders—to proceed from their position to the beach at Dunkerque for evacuation. They were warned that the main roads were total chaos— choked with refugees from Belgium and the northern parts of Pas de Calais and riddled with bomb craters and road blocks. But withdrawal would be every man for himself. They were given no plan for an orderly retreat.

With his front visor closed, Bruno, sitting in the leather sling in the commander’s station, shuts his eyes and dozes to the rhythm of the slap of the tracks as the tanks move along the road. He trusts Emile, leans upon his strength, makes no attempt to interfere with his decisions as a driver. As they approach the dingy outskirts of Lille, Emile pulls their tank into formation. Four tanks to their right—twenty yards between each vehicle; another four follow behind along a narrow road which crawls through a mountain of rubble from pavement to pavement, past abandoned trucks and tanks, and mules dead and dying in fresh fields of lily of the valley.

Bruno sleeps but a few anxious and impatient minutes; minutes confused with elusive dreams leaving only an abstract impression on his half-awakened senses.

From the upper corner of a building, a window flies open and a voice—almost indistinguishable above the thunder of the tanks—shouts “Boche!”  The voice, only part of his cogency, brings him instantly upright.

 “Boche!”

He flips open his visor.

A wave of running German soldiers comes through the meadows at the lower end of the village.

The French tanks open fire and keep going, running the gauntlet of machine gun fire, fleeing beyond the edge of town, leaving the Germans behind.

 These were likely not the last Germans they would meet on the road from Lille to Dunkerque. Germans are roaming all around.

Bit by bit the tanks make their way north passing through tiny villages, mostly unoccupied and largely destroyed. A few buildings line the streets here and there and piles of bricks and plaster and broken glass now stand where bakeries and farmhouses and mills once stood.

Just past one of these villages they come across a French tank platoon that has run out of gasoline. They’ve joined a few remaining Tommies and have taken up abandoned British and German weapons. They seem prepared to mount a sacrificial defense—a fight to the end. Bruno ponders what the coming hours will hold for these kids—for that’s what they are: just boys, not soldiers at all. Do they know their death is certain? He only hopes their lives will not be wasted. He thinks of his own father, thirty-three years-old when he died a useless death fighting for the Germans at Verdun.

Slightly older than the others Bruno is not unduly trouble by the possibility of his own death; he’d come to grips with his mortality the first time a bullet had soared past his head. Yes, the secret is knowing how to live till you're through living. He’d always been a determined pessimist.

Turning to get another look, he smiles as he watches the young soldiers clink bottles of wine and pause to congratulate one another with hardy laughter after each good shot.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between courage and stupidity.

§

 The nine tanks push on toward Armentières. There is very little doing until they come to the river just outside Lille. Past the shallow water and across the road is a well-defended German blockade.

Standing, Bruno slaps ammunition into the machine gun feed. His tank isn’t equipped with radios—no way to communicate with the others. Bruno and Emile are determined to get through.

They drive steadily to within meters of the roadblock, Bruno keeping his eye on the Germans through his vision slits. The enemy glares menacingly from behind their anti-tank guns.

“Keep going,” Bruno shouts to Emile. “Just keep going!”

Emile veers to the left and rams the engine to full speed. The machine rumbles beneath him and the tank plods along at 27 kilometers per hour. Sparks erupt as the enemy gunners open fire. The bursts clang and pitter-patter in a shower of sparks against the armored Hotchkiss and bounce to the ground.

Bruno knows his antiquated machine guns will have little effect against the Nazi artillery. His only hope is to maneuver his weapon to keep the enemy gunners from hitting their target. As he loads, aims and fires he looks no farther ahead than the objective that demands his close scrutiny.

Another round of artillery fire whizzes past. 

His machine gun fills the cabin with smoke and sparks, spitting shell casings clattering down onto the metal deck. A spout of jagged muzzle flashes rake the ground, blowing dust and sand into German faces.

The Hotchkiss lurches along. Shell casings continue to stream from the Reibel machine gun, spilling across the floor, arcing so close to Bruno’s face he can feel the heat. His vision blurs; his eyes sting; a choking wave of smoke fills his lungs. Casings roll back and forth underfoot.

They take a road beyond the fields and mount the crest of a ridge. The dust and smoke begin to clear. The sound of gun fire falls into the distance.

Bruno scans the field. Nothing but trees and under growth. He climbs through the rear hatch—fresh air blows across his face. The artillery fire dies. He surveys the area. Their entire unit has vanished as if into thin air. Bruno has no way of knowing what has happened. He only knows that he and Emile are alone. All they can do is continue on the main road and hope to find a trace of somebody they know. Traveling solo they’d be out there in the open like a sitting duck.

§

At the edge of a forest they come upon a crowded narrow road packed with tanks and Bedford lorries, horse-drawn artillery wagons and ragged retreating platoons of every sort, walking in an irregular column. Not talking, not singing, just moving, backs bent under their heavy mud-covered gear. Here and there, the occasional soldier separated from his unit, wanders solitary.

French troops and Tommy walking side by side. Most stumble on, too weary to so much as glance aside; their faces burned red from wind and sun, wear expressions of exhaustion and resignation. Some have dirty white bandages around their heads, across their faces or on their arms. Despite it all, they seemed to be waiting for more blows, and ready to take them. The striking of a match here and there shows some few lucky enough to still have remaining cigarettes.

The air is crisp but quickly heating up. Bruno, sleeves rolled up already, unstraps his tin helmet and wipes his wide brow. He opens the gunner’s port and climbs out onto the rear turret, leaving his upper body exposed to the enemy. He grips his rifle between his legs.

A cigarette waggling from the corner of his mouth, Bruno asks a Tommy, “Is this the road to Dunkerque?”

Tommy nods. “See the smoke in the sky...that’s Dunkerque. Dunkerque is burning.”

So, Emile rumbles slowly forward and falls into the line following the blue-black shadow rising from the burning oil refinery.

A half-mile or so down the road, behind a wooden fence in a green pasture, they pass an apple orchard blooming in all its wonder of white, pink and red blossoms in the warm sunshine. Bruno recalls instantly the memory of his mama’s steamy kitchen deliciously scented with the spicy perfume of cooking fruit. In his nostrils there is that scent instead of the smell of burning rubber permeating the still air.

A flock of swallows passes suddenly in a streak overhead. As his eyes follow them, they seem to blend dissonantly, almost indistinguishable from the dull-purple tones of the smoke bruising the blue sky.

In the long history of disharmony between man and nature, nature destroys to recreate, but man seems to destroy for the sake of destruction. Destruction, that is the truth now. Destruction everywhere. In a queer consonant mockery of man’s attempt to destroy, nature says we welcome; the world seems to say; we accept; we re-create beauty. In the earth the spirit of life must continue.

His cigarette burns his fingers. He drops it to the floor amongst the shell casings, crushing it lightly with the toe of his boot. He throws back his head and sends out the last mouthful of smoke in a long, thin thread and begins to compose a letter to his mama in his head. Maybe this time he will have a chance to put his thoughts on paper...telling Mama not to worry... she would anyway.

The convoy slows to a crawling pace. He looks across the rest of the column. A sluggish stream of refugees breaks the queue from a crossroad.

He digs into his shirt pocket for another cigarette, pulls out a kraft paper package of Cigarettes de Troupe, cigarettes provided free to the French Army—to boost morale. Bruno laughs to himself. If they wanted to boost his morale, they would give him a pack of Gauloises, how he craves that rich dark flavor.

He eyes the endless flow of civilians through a misty curtain of cigarette smoke as they cross routes with the British and French units. Dazed Refugees swarm among anxious troops heading for Dunkerque. The civilians know that the Germans are coming, and the Allies are retreating. Some had come to the fortified city of Lille, hoping to find protection from the bombs. Many were convinced that the French Army would stop the Germans again as they did in the last war...the war to end war. He can’t help but wonder what will happen to those who held to their village homes until bombardment had destroyed them; where will they go when they discover the French Army isn’t going to save them this time?

A silent Bruno continues to watch the stream of traffic.  Most coming to the crossroads continue south, seeking refuge in Paris or with families.  Others, old men, a few young ones, women of all ages, flow into the line with the lorries, tanks and foot soldiers moving slowly north toward Dunkerque. All of them in a sort of desperate emptiness staring ahead.

Here and there are entire families moving down the road with their most prized possessions and furniture piled onto handcarts of all kinds, some pulled by the parents and pushed from behind by frightened children, or in private cars piled with mattresses tied to the roof in case of air attack. Stout peasant women in dark skirts trudge along in wooden clogs, huge bundles on their backs; and middle-aged housewives, some in their Sunday best, others still wearing their aprons, with belongings wrapped in bed sheets, thread their way in and out among bicycles and horse drawn farm wagons, family dogs, and cows tied to farm carts.  while artillery fire booms, dull and heavy to the north.

A group draws aside to let pass a French truck powered by a steam boiler which was fed with wood or whatever is available to burn. Above the noise of the engine Bruno can hear machine-gun fire.

The convoy creeps its way through the hopeless traffic jam clogged by the non-stop stream of refugees. They rumble and rattle and jolt along, passing cars left on the grass—probably out of fuel, lorries in a ditch, shattered horses dead and dying and delicate red poppies in the fields and in the ditches along the road.

Ahead, on a slight rise, beyond a row of poplar trees lies the wreck of a little village. A poor place. A peaceful little town, and quite beautiful, once. Now quiet and empty, its only street deserted and in ruins.

Then out of the eerie silence comes the sudden roar of approaching planes and the mournful long scream of a Jericho Trumpet followed by cries, “Luftwaffe!  Duck for cover! Stuka, Stuka!”

Bruno hears the distinct whistling siren wail seconds before the inverted gull wings of the dive bombers emerge from an opening in the trees; the planes approaching in close formation.

Everyone abandons their carts and wagons in panic and scatter, bolting to the field, jumping under lorries and huddling in ditches.

Soldiers drop flat on the ground.

The German bombers plunge toward the ground shooting out round after round strafing the refugee filled road.

Bullets whack—thump-thump-thump into the earth. Shrapnel and debris rain down.

Bruno flicks away his cigarette, reaches for his rifle and drops through the open turret to the protection of the commander’s position. He crouches behind his machine gun, his feet slipping on the bullet casings covering the floor and opens fire on the Nazi planes.

He taps Emile on the shoulder and signals to turn the turret to the right. They both know the Stukas have an implacable armor able to survive counterfire from anti-aircraft guns. But that doesn’t stop them from showering the German planes with machine gun fire.

Inside the tank, smoke hangs thick in the air, Bruno’s ears throb, his eyes burn, and the walls are peppered with spots burned brown by the heat generated from shells hitting the exterior. But the tank’s armor does not give way.

It seems the Luftwaffe pilots are playing with the refugees, creating chaos, using intimidation tactics—psychological warfare like the horrific propeller-driven shrieking horns mounted under their wings, having fun frightening them before mowing down the peasants who are too slow to reach cover. No target seems too insignificant.

Bruno shouts in German. “Gott strafe England! Nein! Gott strafe Deutschland!” He raises his fist and shakes it toward the sky.  “Die Strafe? You come to punish us— we will punish you.”

Just as abruptly as it started, the machine gun fire ends. The constant wail ends. The air is silent.

Bruno waits.

Then, barely before a warning can be shouted out, the shrieks fill the air again. The planes are back for a second try; ploughing the road with divots before disappearing into a cloud of rolling smoke and dust.

Silence again, he knows they won’t return for a third time. Probably low on fuel, they’d had enough fun.

The soldiers return to their feet.

The civilians begin to crawl from their hiding spots.

Bruno dusts himself off and climbs out into the air.

The lines begin to move again. They resume the journey until the whole thing is repeated a few miles down the road.